Counterfeits Abound (2 Thessalonians 2:1-3a Jeff Kliewer)

The Lord’s Table and Christ’s Sacrifice

Will you stand with me as we sing together? Of Christ, we have one hope, of our Lord Jesus Christ, that solid rock, the foundation in which our salvation lies. We are worthy, we are not worthy to stand before him and sing praises to his name, but he has invited us in if we call out his name.

He is worthy of our praise. He is sovereign over all. Cold times that we go through, we know that if we have a firm foundation in you, that you'll never forget us. We know that you are sovereign over everything, you have everything planned out.

From the beginning of time, we are so thankful, Lord, that you've given us a glimpse of hope in the future, that you are coming back again someday, that you will redeem, finish the redemption process, allow us to spend eternity with you for taking Stan through this fire.

Allow your gospel to change lives, even in a hospital room. Continue to heal Stan as he's home now. We are blessed to be called your children and sing praises to you because you are sovereign. Strength within.

In church, we're here today as Christians to celebrate the Lord's table. When Jesus ate with his disciples at the Last Supper, he provided for them and for us a picture of his sacrifice so that we could remember what he did for us and the cost of his sacrifice.

Jesus said in John 6, 51, "'I am the living bread that came down from heaven. "'If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. "'And the bread that I will give "'for the life of the world is my flesh.'".

Here, Jesus is actually picturing his coming sacrifice as a propitiation for our sin. I always think about, when I was preparing for this, I was thinking about, you know, I'm hearing the news about these new telescopes that they're, you know, putting in orbit, and, you know, all of the things that we're discovering in the universe, galaxies far, far away, and thinking about the God that was there at the beginning of time that created all of that, and how he condescended to take on human flesh to come and die on a cross for our sins so that he could provide a way to reconcile us to him.

And I just am left awestruck with the thought of that. Paul also, in 1 Corinthians, teaches us that we should not take this ordinance lightly. It says in 1 Corinthians 11, 27 through 29, "'Whoever therefore eats the bread "'and drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner "'will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord.

"'Let a person examine himself, then, "'and so eat the bread and drink the cup, "'for anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body "'eats and drinks judgment on himself.'". So clearly the Lord's table is something that should be taken very seriously.

Each one of us should examine ourselves, repent of the sins that we've committed. We should thank him for his sacrifice and the grace and mercy that he's shown us, calling us out of darkness into light and freeing us from the bondage of sin.

This should be a time of reflection and communion with our Lord and Savior. So let's take a moment to do just that. Lord God, I just thank you so much for sending your Son to die on the cross for us, for providing a way for us to be forgiven of the sin that we commit on a daily basis, God.

Thank you for providing a way for us to be reconciled to you. And Lord, we just thank you so much for the grace and mercy that you've shown us. In Christ's name, amen. If the guys could come down.

How blessed are we that we can partake of the bread and the cup representing the body and the blood of our Savior Jesus. It's awesome. Forgiveness of sin through his blood, it is the greatest gift. It's an indescribable gift.

And yet we get to remember that, what he's done for us. Let us go now to the Lord in prayer and then we'll open his word together. Father God, this morning, we pray that you would train our hands for war.

Lord, we are in a truth war and we need a sword. I think of David's mighty men, one of whom stood in a field and swung the sword and fought off the enemy until his hand froze to the handle. His fingers stiffened around that grip.

He would not let it go. I pray that each young person and old person, man, woman, in this room would be made strong in the battle today. That our grip would be tightened upon your word. Your word is truth.

Your word is the sword. I pray that you would teach us to wield it well. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. We are in a truth war. And it seems to me that the war is coming to a head. Some preaching Christ and the conservative values of the word of God were being throttled by those who oppose the word of God.

So God saw fit to unthrottle the conservative view by causing Elon Musk to buy Twitter. And many of the people that I follow that used to get a few hundred or thousand views now all of a sudden get tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands because they've been unblocked.

That's reason to celebrate. But discernment would say that a man, Elon Musk, who is pursuing transhumanism and had babies with a known witch knowing that she was practicing Wicca would not be somebody that we should trust implicitly.

So whereas we celebrate good things that happen, we must approach all things with discernment. Of course, in this truth war, those who were seeking to silence the voice of Christians in America didn't give up.

This week, they decided to establish a, what do they call it? A disinformation board. Sounds like the ministry of truth from a dystopian novel. This disinformation board will be headed by a woman who sang like Mary Poppins and in one point advocated that masks were unnecessary and then turned around and said that masks were necessary, flip-flopped each way trying to censor those who disagree with her views, but she doesn't even agree with her own self.

So obviously it's impossible for a disinformation board to govern free speech and to try to do so is dystopian. The White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki was asked about it and said, it sounds like the objective of the board is to prevent disinformation and misinformation from traveling around the country in a range of communities.

I'm not sure who opposes that effort. So Jen Psaki is saying there's nothing to see here. All is on the up and up, nothing to fear. Well, brothers and sisters, we are in a truth war and we have been since the Garden of Eden.

In the coming of Christ, Jesus proclaimed himself to be the truth. I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. Pontius Pilate was confronted with that claim and his answer was very postmodern.

What is truth? Truth comes from God and Jesus is the truth. Now in the 1800s, there were some who were claiming to follow the truth who fell for a counterfeit. The first to lead this movement was a man named William Miller.

Maybe you've heard of him. He was a deist who was converted to Christianity and then began to read the Bible. As he came across the book of Daniel, he discovered something that no one had ever seen before.

Bad sign, red flag. In Daniel chapter eight, verse 14, he read about the 2300 days. And he decided that those days meant years, 2300 years. Picking a starting date, which was the time when Artaxerxes sent for the rebuilding of the temple, he calculated from five something BC to the year 1844, the 2300 years, and made the claim that Jesus was coming back in March of 1844.

This movement began in the 1820s and gained steam to the effect that millions of people were looking for March 1844 to be the time of the coming of Christ to their grave disappointment. But that did not stop the movement.

Adventism continued on. And a woman whose name was Ellen White began to claim that she was having visions from God and she wrote these visions down and she sent them out and people began to listen. She claimed actually Jesus did come in 1844, only not visibly.

He moved from one place of the Holy of Holies into the Holy of Holies, into the inner part of the heavenly temple. And from there, he's carrying out an investigative judgment where he's looking at you and I, who profess to be Christians, and determining if our works are living up to that.

He's investigating from heaven. This, of course, is the doctrine of Seventh-day Adventism. Ben Carson and millions of people around the country follow this. The problem is an investigative judgment reintroduces works to the gospel.

And it is fanciful. It is not the case that Jesus moved into a heavenly tabernacle in 1844. It was a false prophecy that was unfulfilled. Charles Taze Russell was an Adventist who then began to deny the Trinity.

And from him came, some of you know, the Jehovah's Witnesses in the 1870s. About that time when Millerism began, another named Joseph Smith, thinking that we were in the last days, founded what is called the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

And so the Mormon Church was born. There are counterfeits to the true gospel that we believe. There are counterfeit writings and spoken words and spirits, antichrist spirits, that deny the Trinity. These heresies have abounded since the founding of the church with Gnosticism and the Judaizers.

All throughout church history, there have been counterfeits. And brothers and sisters, none of us here are immune from being deceived. In and of ourselves, we don't have the resources to fight off the counterfeits, to resist the lies of the enemy.

All of us are prone to being deceived, but we have the infallible Word of God. We have a sword, the sword of the Spirit. And with this sword, if you know how to handle it, if you believe it in everything that it's spoken, if you have a sword, you can resist the devil.

You can fight off the lies. I wanna show you in 2 Thessalonians today, a counterfeit that was introduced into a very young church. They were just a small plant, not deeply rooted, and the enemy knew that they were susceptible to a lie.

Turn with me to 2 Thessalonians 2. Today, we're gonna study verses one to three. But to understand where this came from, we need a little bit of background. I'll read it in just a minute. But remember that in 1 Thessalonians, Paul had sent a letter back to the Thessalonian church and told them many things about end times, okay?

The second coming of Christ. He told them in 1 Thessalonians 5 too, you yourselves are fully aware that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. He wanted the Thessalonians to be looking for the return of Christ, but to know that the day of the Lord, the period of wrath, in which God pours out judgment on the earth, that this day is gonna come suddenly like a thief in the night.

It'll be upon you when you weren't expecting it. And then something happened to the Thessalonians. They began to suffer persecution. They began to lose their jobs. Some of them might've been killed. Many of them beat up for preaching the gospel.

And along comes a deceiver. Seeing this happen and tells the Thessalonians that the reason you're suffering, the afflictions that you're going through, is that the day of the Lord has come. It came like a thief in the night.

You didn't expect it. And here it is. So now let's see the writing. 2 Thessalonians 2, verses one to three. Now, concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered together to him, we ask you, brothers, not to be quickly shaken in mind or alarmed, either by a spirit or a spoken word or a letter seeming to be from us to the effect that the day of the Lord has come.

Let no one deceive you in any way. Isn't that remarkable? So by this time, Paul has moved on from Thessalonica. He's gone through Berea and then to Athens. And at the time of the writing of this book, he is in Corinth.

He receives word in Corinth that somebody wrote a letter pseudonymously. Try to say that real fast, seven times. No, don't actually do it. It's a hard word, but somebody wrote a letter in his name as if Paul had sent it.

So they left Thessalonica, they went down to Berea or something. They wrote a letter and they sent it through the post service, pretending to be from Paul. And they signed Paul's name to it. And it has completely upset the apple cart.

The Thessalonian church is in disarray. Many of them believe the letter and yet it doesn't sound like what Paul had told them. Discernment was missing. They were alarmed, were told according to verse two.

They're shaken in mind, they're alarmed. This letter has come. It says a letter seeming to be from us. And because Paul gives the content here to the effect that the day of the Lord has come, it's not just a hypothetical letter because he's saying specifically what the letter addressed.

Someone is writing counterfeits in his name. It's been happening for thousands of years. Gnostic gospels written in the name of Thomas or Barnabas or Mary. The Quran, Muhammad's so-called revelation from God claims to be a continuation of the Bible and a further revelation.

As we've mentioned, Joseph Smith brings the so-called Book of Mormon, a fanciful tale supposedly being apostolic. All throughout church history, we have seen counterfeits. Whether a letter or a book as in those cases or a spoken word.

Some fantastic orator like Pelagius who comes into Rome preaching a work salvation but does it so passionately that half the empire begins to follow. Or Arius teaching against the Trinity until Athanasius shows him down.

Brothers and sisters, we are in a truth war. And you cannot fight in a war without a weapon and the weapon of our warfare is the word of God. We live in a day of biblical illiteracy where few know the word and therefore many are deceived and they're susceptible to being deceived by the word of God.

Often, these deceptions relate to the second coming as in the Adventist movement and the Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses and many movements around the world claiming that the second coming has happened.

That's what happened here in second Thessalonians. So what is our defense so as not to be quickly shaken in mind or alarmed? Our defense is to know the word, to store it in our heart. Now, we need to understand that the nature of our warfare is truth versus lies.

When we grasp that, we get into the game, we get into the battle. If we don't know that we're at war, the Bible begins to collect dust on our bookshelf. We don't realize how crucial it is that we're holding fast to the word of God.

So briefly, I just wanna make a point about the word of God and how important this teaching is, namely that you're in a truth war and you need to be memorizing scripture. I've tried to memorize one verse from each book in the New Testament in order to underscore this point that every book in the New Testament addresses the truth war.

I put those verses that I'll try to recite in your notes to look up later. And leading by example, I'll probably stumble over some of them, have to look at my notes, but leading by example, I want to encourage all of you to memorize some of these verses, amen?

So let's see if we can go through it and recognize that every book in the New Testament tells you you need to be a truth warrior. Matthew, beware of false prophets. They come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they're ravenous wolves.

Mark says, is this not why you are wrong? Because you know not the scriptures nor the power of God. Luke, beware of the scribes. They love to wear long robes and take the best seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at the feasts.

John, whoever is of God will hear his words. Acts 17 .11, but these Jews were more noble than those in Thessalonica for they received the word with eagerness, examining the scriptures daily to see if these things were so.

Romans 16 .17, mark those who cause divisions and create obstacles contrary to the doctrine that you have been taught, avoid them. First Corinthians 12 .13, to some is given working of miracles, to others prophecy, to others the discerning of spirits and to others tongues and interpretation.

Second Corinthians, but I am afraid that your minds would be led astray as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ. Galatians, I am astonished that you are so easily being led to a different gospel, which is being led from the grace of God to a different gospel, which is no gospel at all.

Ephesians, no longer like children tossed to and fro by the wind and the waves of doctrine in the deceitful scheming of men. Philippians, watch out for those dogs, those men who do evil, those mutilators of the flesh, for it is we who are the circumcision, we who worship in the spirit of God, who glory in Christ Jesus and who put no confidence in the flesh.

Colossians 2 .8, see to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit and not according to Christ. First Thessalonians chapter five, verse 21 said, you just studied this last time, test everything, hold on to what is good.

Second Thessalonians chapter two, verse two, not alarmed in mind or easily shaken either by a spoken word or a letter seeming to have come from us. First Timothy chapter four, the spirit expressly says that in latter times many will depart from the faith, paying attention to deceitful spirits and the teachings of demons.

Second Timothy chapter four, verse three, they'll be led astray by their itching ears, gathering up teachers that suit their own passions. Titus about the elder, he must be well-taught and hold to the tradition.

It says, so that he may be able to give instruction and to rebuke those who contradict. Philemon, verse six, says that the sharing of your faith may amount to the full knowledge of every good thing that we have in Christ Jesus.

Hebrews chapter five, verse 14, but solid food is for the mature who by constant practice, so we're doing, practicing, who by constant practice have trained the power of God and the powers of their discernment to distinguish between good and evil.

James is real simple. He just says, do not be deceived, my brothers. What comes after James? Very good. Who said that? Way to go, Robert. First Peter is the locus classicus on this subject, right? Apologetics, first Peter 3 .15, but set apart Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to give a reason for the hope that is in you.

Only do this with gentleness and respect. Second Peter chapter two, verse one, watch out for false prophets. For many false prophets have gone into the world, it says. First, I got that slightly off, sorry, but you get the idea.

False prophets, second Peter 2 .1. We go on to first John is next. Chapter four, verse one. Do not believe every spirit, but test the spirit to see whether it is of God. Second John is about this subject.

Verse seven, many deceivers have gone out into the world. Third John, I have written to you, but Diotrephes who loves to be first does not acknowledge our authority. Jude, Jude is actually, the whole book is about this subject.

He says, I was eager to write to you concerning our common salvation, but I thought that it was necessary to write to you to contend for the faith that was once and for all handed down to the saints. And in Revelation chapter two, verse 14, Jesus says one thing he has against them.

They have some there who hold to the teaching of Balaam, who taught Balak to sin by putting a stumbling block in the way of sons of Israel, teaching them to eat food, sacrifice to idols and to practice sexual immorality.

27 books in your New Testament, 27 books. Every one of them teaches you to arm yourself with the word of God because you're in a truth war. Now I'm gonna challenge you, some of you saints who have a lot of time on your hands, maybe you're retired, you can memorize 27 of them.

You say, wait a minute, my mind is older. Yeah, it's hard for me too now that my mind is older. Some of you kids that are in school, you have a little less time. Maybe you could memorize three or four of those.

All of us are in a truth war and every book in the New Testament is telling you to sharpen the edge of that blade, to strengthen your grip on that handle. You are in a fight and if you're not equipped with knowledge of the word, you can be deceived because many deceivers have gone into the world.

This is the main theme that I wanted to stress this morning. Look again with me at 2 Thessalonians chapter two. This is the verse that launched me into this train of thought and got me memorizing verses this week.

Not to be quickly shaken in mind or alarmed either by a spirit. Let's look at that word, spirit. It refers to a demonic spirit. Did you know that we fight not, we wrestle not against flesh and blood but against spiritual forces in heavenly places?

There are spirits of the world, the elemental spirits as Colossians 2 .8 describes them. These are worldly philosophies, ideas that are prevalent and these are the things that are popular. Now they don't masquerade as being evil.

They come to you in sheep's clothing. The ideas of the world, whatever's popular at the time, whether it be a wind or wave of social justice in 2020 or the continual onslaught of LGBTQ ideology, this is a wind and a wave of deceit.

But here's the danger, church. Many Christians, unaware of what the scripture teaches, will begin to adopt the ideologies of the world. This is what we call liberalism. Liberalism within Christianity is to take worldly things and slap a Christian label on it.

It's been done since the first century. The Gnostic teachers were influenced by the pagan idolatry of the mystery religions of Babylon mystery religion. And because it was so popular at that time, they simply said, well, Jesus is one of these demi-urges.

It's actually Christian and they became Gnostics. That's where we got the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Mary, the Gospel of Barnabas, and which ultimately gave us the Quran. These were counterfeits with a Christian label on it that was not genuine.

It's been happening from the first century. So what does it look like in 2022? Liberalism in the church is to say the things that the world says and slap a Christian label on it. A Christian church performing gay weddings.

When the word of God says, he made them man and woman, and the man shall leave his family and be united to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. This is God's beautiful design of marriage. And yet many churches would profane that beautiful institution.

That's what liberalism is. And all manner of deceit masquerades as Christian in our day. Church, will you be discerning? I know you will be. Or will you be blown by the wind and wave of the culture? Whatever's popular at the time.

It feels to me like the evangelical church after a few years of deep, hard-fought battles has been vanquishing the lies of social justice. In 2020, I felt like a lone wolf. Shouldn't use the term wolf, that describes.

I felt like a loner. I felt like a voice in the wilderness. Where are the other pastors that see this deceit? But now, the tides have been turned. Come against a Christian church, they'll hatch something new.

And it won't be long. It's been happening for thousands of years. The way that you can be safe from that kind of deception is to be armed with the word of God. First of all, you're fighting a spirit. What was the second thing?

A spoken word. A spoken word. Oratory. The great, skilled speaker who can captivate a crowd like Adolf Hitler. The spoken word is powerful. And many people use the platform of television, the talking heads on CNN, to influence the thought of people.

But we are in a truth war. The spoken word is an enemy, but we'll get to the end. We also have a word to speak. Lastly, in this verse, a letter seeming to be from us. The written word. Counterfeit gospels.

The writings of Ellen White in the Seventh Day Adventist movement. The teachings of Russell in the Jehovah's Witness movement, the Watchtower Society. Maybe you've gotten that literature on your door.

The counterfeits are distributed far and wide, claiming apostolic authority, and yet opposing the truth of God. Often they're regarding end times, as these cults that I've mentioned generally are to the effect that the day of the Lord has come.

It says, let no one deceive you in any way. The media, all I have to say is the media. People are nodding their heads. The media is bent against the gospel of Jesus Christ. And that's why the truth of the gospel is suppressed on all the major platforms.

And those who preach the truth are marginalized. But the truth war in which we are engaged matters. I want to alert you to something that's going on in California right now. Remember how I mentioned in Matthew, there are some who masquerade as Christians, but inwardly they're ravenous wolves.

Well, the governor of California, his name is Gavin Newsom, claims to be a Christian. He says he's a Catholic and he says, I have strong faith. He even quotes Bible verses, usually Matthew 25 to shame the right.

Gavin Newsom is aware of a very good thing that's going to happen. I think in a matter of months, Roe versus Wade will be overturned in this country. But he's seeing what Florida and Texas and some other states are doing.

And Gavin Newsom says, California will be a sanctuary for women seeking abortions. And so right now in California, they have a bill called AB 2223. And this bill is as wicked and demonic as anything you could imagine.

It extends abortion rights to perinatal death. You say, well, what kind of language is that? They wouldn't want to just come out and say what they're saying. Perinatal death is defined as death within the first 28 days of a baby's life.

According to this bill, 2223 in California, a woman cannot be prosecuted or even investigated over an infant death through the first 28 days. Do you know what this means? It's infanticide. And there's language that would indicate it has to be related to something from the pregnancy, meaning if a child has birth defects or may be born with Down syndrome, then it's legal infanticide in the United States of America.

And if it starts in California, once Roe versus Wade is thrown down, where does it go next? New Jersey, where we stand. I wonder, do we have truth warriors at Cornerstone Church? Do we have someone that will write letters to the Senate when it becomes a state issue rather than a federal issue?

When Roe versus Wade is overturned, do we have some that will go there and protest if they ever try to introduce a bill like that in New Jersey? Clap your hands if you will. I saw a video of Jack Hibbs who leads Calvary Chapel in California and they got more than 2 ,000 people to stand up there and Hibbs was given the opportunity to speak and he looked at every council member and said, if you pass this bill, every one of you is guilty of premeditated murder.

He said it to their faces, he said it as it was. Because he understood, this is a truth war and what you believe about life created in the image of God is a matter of truth and lie. What do you believe?

And by the way, the baby to 28 days is no more valuable than the baby in the womb. The travesty of abortion in this country has already crossed the line. It crosses the line at conception, not at the heartbeat and certainly not at entry through birth.

We are in a truth war. There are elemental spirits of this age, spirits of deception, demonic spirits, spoken words, orators like Newsome who sounds so good to some. But it's a war that must be fought by the word of God.

Let no one deceive you in any way. So how do you keep from being deceived? You put down deep roots in the word of God. I have a bush that's been growing in front of my house and I bought the house in 2011.

So by 2022, I've been trimming it a little bit at a time, but I noticed it was taking up half of the window. I hadn't kept it under control. So I went to trim it back and I realized that I couldn't do it without getting rid of all of the green.

Because when you start to cut back a bush, only the top of it is green. Everything else is just sticks. So I cut this thing down to these terrible looking little sticks popping out of the ground. It looks ridiculous.

I'm probably gonna have to replace it. But you know what amazed me the last two days? Those sticks are already putting out green shoots within days. I thought, how could this be? Well, the answer is that bush has strong roots.

It's deeply planted in the soil and it's sucking up water and it's putting forth shoots. Guys, we might get cut. We might get hurt. Like 2 Thessalonians 1 is about these cuts, these afflictions that they're taking.

But when you're deeply rooted, Colossians 2 .6, when you're rooted and grounded, you will not be shaken. You will not be alarmed. You will not be easily moved. They can't take the life from us. Be like that well-grounded, that well-rooted bush, that grounded soldier who knows how to stand the ground, like the soldiers in a pod.

Not like a child blown around by the wind. I'm from Florida. Sometimes the wind would be so strong as a coming tropical storm or small hurricane, you could lean into it and it would hold you up or run in it and it could blow you along.

It was fun as a child. But that's not a picture of a mature Christian. The mature Christian stands his ground, not blown this way and that. By every wind of doctrine, every new thing that comes up, get rooted, get grounded.

The Christian will not be deceived unless we leave the door open. Do not let yourself be deceived. Chapter three, chapter two, verse three. So in application, here's what I want you to do. Memorize at least one.

Can you do that? Everybody can do that, amen? But up to 27 of these verses that you have in your notes. Understand you're in a truth war. Memorize some of these. I picture it like a ship. Remember the verse from Ephesians?

Chapter four, verse 14. Like a ship being tossed by the waves? How do you keep a ship from capsizing? You add ballast to the whole. Adding Bible memory verses and knowledge of the scripture is like ballast in your ship.

It weighs it down, it pushes it down far enough under the water that it can't capsize with the wind and the waves. You need to add ballast by reading the scripture, examining the scripture daily to see if these things are true.

This is a truth war. They have a spirit animating them. The devil and his minions. Brothers and sisters, we have a spirit, the Holy Spirit. And greater is he that is in us than the one that is in the world.

We can win this truth war because we take captive every thought and make it obedient to Christ. We demolish arguments, according to 2 Corinthians 10, four. We have truth, they have lies. Which one of those will win in the end?

They have spoken words, but we have spoken words. Let's say they do throttle us and Elon Musk turns out to be just as wicked as the rest of them. If that be the case, who knows? We're foot soldiers and we can go out speaking with our words.

Imagine millions of Christians around this country saying door-to-door and park-to-park and campus-to-campus that Jesus is Lord and calling people to obey his word. I went to Princeton this week with a brother.

We shared the gospel in two hours probably with eight or nine people. Every one of those young people were interested in what we had to say. Some of them said they were believing what we had to say. Atheists and Christian background kids that didn't really know the gospel.

The spoken word, we have the gospel and your feet are beautiful when you speak it. Lastly, we have the written word. They have these counterfeit letters. Whatever the newest book is, it'll be a fad on the New York Times bestselling list for a month or two, then they move on to the next thing.

We have the timeless sword of truth. Never grows old, never fails. It is the word of the living God. We have the genuine. All they have is these counterfeits. We have the actual words of Paul, not something written pseudonymously.

And so brothers and sisters, let's go to the Lord in prayer and strengthen our resolve to memorize the word, to be grounded and rooted in the word of truth. Let's pray. Father God, thank you so much for your inerrant, infallible, authoritative word.

We pray Lord that you would make us strong for the battle, strengthen our hands, train our hands for war. We are in a truth war and we pray that you fit us for it. Like David's mighty men, pray that we would cling and hold fast the word of truth.

Help us to wield it well. Lord, we do pray for an end to abortion in this country and we pray for great victories to come even in this liberal state of New Jersey. Give us victories in the truth war. Lord, we pray that you would send us out speaking the gospel.

Give us lips that praise you, the fruit of salvation. Thank you for your truth. Your word is truth. Sanctify us by the truth. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.

The wrath of Satan's joy that will cheer me on

Hey, stick around, we have a picnic out here, hang out, fellowship with one another. You did not need to sign up to stick around, okay? Everybody is welcome to stay, plenty of food. Let me read the benediction.

Now to him who is able to strengthen you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery that was kept secret for long ages but has now been disclosed and through the prophetic writings has been made known to all nations according to the command of the eternal God to bring about the obedience of faith to the only wise God be glory forevermore through Jesus Christ, amen.

So what I was gonna do was flip the monitors and unplug the system, unplug the keyboard and run through the monitor and see if it's just the other way around. So, I'm gonna make a picture of something.

I mean, if you don't mind, this is a company that's going after it, so we have one code. So I'll grab that mic, I'm gonna make this a mic, keep it in warm water, okay? I'm wearing a little system on my hands right now.