Now, the Spirit speaketh expressly that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of devils. speaking lies and hypocrisy, having their conscience seared with a hot iron, forbidding to marry and commanding to abstain from meats which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth. For every creature of God is good and nothing to be refused if it be received with thanksgiving, for it is sanctified by the word and by prayer." So, by the way, this is the scripture passage where we have the fact of praying before you eat, all right? This is where we get that from, that it's proper to pray for any food that we receive it with thanksgiving, okay? That's not where I'm gonna center focus our message today, but this is the passage. You say, well, does the Lord tell us to pray before we eat? Yes, right here in this passage. tells you to pray before you eat. Let's have a word of prayer and we'll get into this message tonight. Father, I thank you for, Lord, the verse-by-verse studies that we're doing here on Thursday night and in Sunday school, how our hearts have been fed, Lord, by the word and by every syllable. of these words and I pray that you guide and direct again and meet with us, we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. I want you to look at the beginning of this, it says now, okay? And the word now is a Greek word day, sometimes is a continuation in function, but here it is adversative. So it means sort of like but or a conjunction type of deal. There is a contrast here between the preceding confession of faith. You remember I preached a couple weeks ago from verse 16. Great is the mystery of godliness, right? The previous chapter, verse 16. God was manifest in the flesh, so we have the deity of Christ and we preached a message about the glorious Savior. And then this word at the beginning of chapter four, which was probably a fine place to put the chapter headings, those are not inspired. But it's to say in contrast of what we have just learned about the doctrine of Christ, there are those that are following the wrong doctrines. And doctrine is very important. Now the end times are described by Paul here a little bit as having been a time of apostasy. And he's warning Timothy. Timothy, in your ministry, you're going to face those who have departed from the truth, from the doctrine that you have been taught. And Mr. Phillips, one of the commentaries I like to read, he said the apostasy was already taking route during apostolic times, it will reach full and final development in the end times. And so, you know, it's just increased. If you'll look over in Flip over to 2nd Timothy, if you will, chapter number 3. 2nd Timothy, just go a couple more pages, and in chapter number 3, you find in verse 12, "...and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution." If you think getting on God's side is going to be an easy ride, he says it's not. Where's the persecution coming from? Look at verse 13. But evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived. Alright, so here is, go back to chapter 4 again of 1st Timothy, and you'll see that there's an apostasy that exists today, existed in the time of Timothy and Paul, and he's saying, hey, this is going to get worse as we approach the end of the age. called the end times, in the latter times. Now notice it says that the spirit speaketh expressly. An interesting word, that word expressly. It's Greek word that underlies this is only found in one place, right here. It's an interesting word. We call that, when it does that, we call that phenomena a apex legomena, where it's found only one time in the Texas Receptus out of the some 4,000 words that are in there. And here is one of those. This word expressly means really outspokenly, distinctly, and in specific terms. So the Spirit is speaking very, very specifically, very in a way that we would call it in certain terms, not unknown. He's not hiding something. He's telling you exactly what it's going to be like. The Spirit speaketh expressly. And we are aware of this description. being prominent in our day, and it is what we see, the end times. It is the end times as an era. The elements were planted in the day of the apostles and now have come to seed in our day. And we can expect only these efforts to grow, to grow and to grow and to grow. I mean, we're gonna fight this until, look, we don't exactly know when the Lord's coming back. I happen to think it's going to be very soon. But even if it is another 50 years, it's only going to get worse. Okay? We vetted, last night we had a political meeting where we vetted a candidate for mayor to run in the next mayoral candidate. It's something we do in a political side. And then we were discussing the things that are happening in our local government. Our little Pocatello in the conservative state of Idaho, and it's as corrupt as it can ever get. It is corrupt. In fact, they're making a documentary which is supposed to be aired this Saturday on the corruption just of the present mayor and his land grab and his underhanded dealings. But as we went through the discussion, it was almost depressing talking about, in our little corner of the world, in what we would normally call the very conservative state of Idaho, There is massive corruption going on, spending underhanded, unreported to the taxpayer all through it. Listen, it's only going to get worse. Now, I made a plea to the folks that were there that, hey, don't get discouraged. Pocatello is worth saving. It's an awfully good town. It's a nice place to live. It's a great place to raise your children. It is an awesome town with the amenities just enough for us to have what we want and not too big to feel like we're out of a quaint type of situation. It is a nice area. A good church is here and God's blessings are here. Now let's gather the people and go fix the problems. But in a general sense, in the area of Bible and religion and church, it's only going to get worse till Christ comes. That doesn't mean we can't have revival. It just means those elements are out there. So the church is focused from the previous chapter as we have seen in verse number 15 of the previous chapter, and it is under attack. Those that are the leaders are to guard watchfully against the attack of apostasy. The members should actively support the leadership in ensuring the continuation of true Bible doctrine. Okay? Doctrine and practice. Now, you have to draw a line somewhere. Now think with me for a moment. Some people have said, they've criticized where we draw our line. As if, The only, I've come to the conclusion that everybody needs to draw their own line to have a church that everybody would be happy with without ever being upset. But then what would we have? Nothing. We draw a line, we will have a line. And we're not gonna bend, we're not gonna change. Because the danger is the minute you start changing the church's stands, then eventually the doctrine will follow. I watch churches where their stands have changed on practice concerning music, that pretty soon they change concerning modesty. Music, modesty, and then you say, they would have said, oh, we're never gonna change our doctrine. Hey, it's connected, and when you run the train off the edge of the cliff, hey, doctrine is going to follow. I mean the church I came from originally there in Indiana, that church started with an ethical problem and their practice became deceitful and the ethical problem has now abandoned the truths of God so that some of their doctrines are failing. And I can no longer recommend my college alma mater. You see, It is something of an attack upon the churches and we need to keep the fight going. We're gonna draw a line and that line is written. Hopefully we've drawn the lines written from the text of scripture, applied from the conservative viewpoint of the Bible, designed for holy living and not for allowing promiscuity or allowing sinful carnality. but it's made to draw the line where this line is going to keep a church pure and doctrinally correct. My first point tonight is the prediction of this apostasy. In verse number one, we've already said a few of these things, but as we mentioned, it was a spirit, the Spirit of God, speaking directly and distinctly. But notice, nextly, it says that in latter times, Some shall depart. Some shall depart. Not everyone will apostatize. Amen. It's impossible that everyone apostatizes. Why? Because of a great passage in Matthew 16, verse number 18, where Christ said, I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. No matter how many churches rise up and how many churches fail, God's churches will survive this creation. It is impossible that when the Lord comes back, there will not be a church and many all across the world somewhere that are preaching the truths uncompromisingly from the word of God, because he said the gates of hell will not prevail against it. But notice the enemy is that we're fighting against the gates of hell. We're reaching into that dark place. We're going to where souls are enslaved by sin, whether it be the increasing meth addict problem we have in our town, or into the sin problem of lust that's controlled by the computers today, or any of those things. We go into where sinners are, grabbing them and hating even the garment spotted by the flesh. The Bible said in Jude that if some have compassion, making a difference, making a difference. But it will be there, not all will apostatize. And I'm glad the Bible is clear about this. He said some. As we're living in it, I'm telling you the feeling that happens, that we can sometimes get a little bit like Elijah of old. where after he had fought his battles, he felt like everyone was gone and he alone was the only one, the prophet of God, that was standing. And the Lord made it clear that there were 7,000 that had not bowed the knee. And I believe that's today. There are 7,000 men of God across this globe preaching the truth of God's Word that have not bowed the knee. We need another 7,000 to reach this world. We need 70,000 of God's people to rise up and go evangelize. But there are some already. Depart, he says, from the faith. Depart from the faith. The Greek word ephistimai is where we get the word agonize. And it means to remove. That is like instigating a revolt. It is to desert, not desert, desert, one S. To desert, not to eat your ice cream. Draw away or refrain is the way that it's rendered in our Bible. They depart, to depart. It is a apostasy, is a departure from the truth to error. Apostasy occurs when people leave and forsake the true teachings and doctrines of God and give their loyalty to a false teaching or doctrine. Most of the present day denominations that we have have apostatized concerning the truth. We are not Protestant, we're Baptist. We preceded the Reformation. The Reformation began in 1517, and the Reformation produced the Protestants. Specifically, if you're interested, historically, in 1528, they had the Diet of Spires. The Pope had rescinded some of the freedoms for each of the princes of the German area that had their own little counties and these men stood up that were in reformed areas and they protested against the rescinding of their freedoms and thus the rest of them were all called protestors or Protestants. They said we should have the freedom and they ought to have had. But all the while the Baptists were there persecuted, persecuted even Calvin killed one of the Anabaptists and persecuted by Zwingli and persecuted where Luther was watching on and giving his consent. Anabaptists have been the end of all of the persecution, even in this country, greatly persecuted by the early colonies that had state-run churches like Virginia and Massachusetts and Connecticut. property was seized, people were scourged, some were killed, others imprisoned. It got to be stories of men like there in the jail, out there outside of Richmond, Virginia, where they had a window with bars and the pastor would preach and his people would gather together. And pretty soon there was such a gathering that they put a wall in front of the window. And then they had a signal to give to the pastor, some rock or I can't remember the story, and they would toss it over the wall and he would know that's the key where he should stand up and preach. And the Baptist would preach under duress. The Baptist would preach when we were freed to preach and when we were being killed to preach, but preach we will do. It is what God commanded us to do and we will do it. But those that were part of the Reformation, many of them adopted doctrines rejecting this idea of works salvation for faith alone, sola fide, for scripture alone, sola scriptura. We had an idea that some of the things that were wrong had been righted and they carried the gospel. And some of them, even into the areas around the world, the Methodists, the Moravians, Even some that were started out as the Presbyterians of Scotland, they were of Scottish origin. and they were preaching the gospel, the basics of the gospel, and they were going around the world doing so. Even Adoniram Judson sent as an Episcopalian preacher out to go to Burma. He got on a boat supported by that group, the Puritan people, the Congregational Church, and with connections to the Church of England. And he got on there and while he was studying, as it was six weeks, going around the Straits of Magellan or wherever they were going, I'm sorry, south of the African Peninsula, and he studied the Bible, became convinced of a Baptist background, went to Calcutta, looked up William Carey, a Baptist preacher from England, and he changed and he became Baptist because of conviction. and at that very moment lost every bit of his support. He was abandoned almost to starve. All the Virginia Baptists men they got together had just obtained their freedoms from Thomas Jefferson and James Madison and working out those things in that famous letter where he mentioned a separation of church and state where Thomas Jefferson wrote in his letter to the Baptists of Virginia that they would not be hindered by a state religion, but they would be guaranteed their freedoms, freedom from the government establishing one religion for a state, not the separation of a church influence on government affairs. They got it wrong. I mean, after all, Thomas Jefferson wrote that on a Friday, and by Sunday afternoon he went into the Capitol where they had the swearing-in on Monday. He went into the Capitol and And he heard a Baptist preacher, John Leland, bring the afternoon sermon, and they were using the Capitol building as a church building on Sunday. Praise God. And John Leland, a great preacher, Baptist preacher of Virginia, whose biography and writings are in our library, you can check out. It is an amazing history of our country. Those Baptist preachers rose up in order to gather together the funds to send to Judson, to keep him going in Burma to see thousands come to know the Lord Christ in time. Boy, it took time. Some amazing things and stories come out of that. There is a prediction of apostasy. Anyone is susceptible to apostasy. I'm putting a class notes together for this Saturday, and I'm talking about preparing preachers, and this Saturday is the pastor's pitfalls. How do you deal with the things that can destroy your ministry? And I will deal with doctrinal elitism. Elitism. Notice, nextly, not only the prediction of apostasy, but notice the prompting of it. Notice in that second verse, or at the end of this verse, Verse number one, giving heed, there are three different biblical truths here, giving heed, and then he says to seducing spirits and doctrines of devils. So I named the sermon doctrines of devils, right? and a fitting thing to talk about apostasy. But there are three things we could call as prompting this apostasy, and the first one is giving heed. Now this is a problem of our heart. It is a devotional problem when we will give heed to false teaching. We need never give heed to false teachers and false doctrine. Amen? We will run into the false teachers, and we are to compare and to filter everything somebody teaches, how? By the word of God. Now, we're gonna run into that situation from time to time. You're gonna come to church at some point, somewhere, and you're gonna say, boy, what he preached didn't set me right, you know? Feels like I'm walking home sideways. And you need to compare it to the word of God. However, when we identify a false teacher, The Bible teaches us we're supposed to separate from that false teacher. In other words, if somebody's out there spoon feeding you apostasy and you say, well, I can chew the meat and spit out the bones. Now that is true for some things like a few good men who have a few areas where we have to watch what they teach. And I'm speaking about Spurgeon's so-called belief in Calvinism. He had a really weird view of Calvinism because his church was known as the soul trap. Or Matthew Henry's, he signed up for Amillennial teachings in the coming of Christ. I'm not talking about that, but when you find a heretic who is trying to influence others to follow this false teaching, to deny the truths of God, the Bible says filter it through the word, and then after it's filtered, hey, stay away. He says in Proverbs 19 verse 27, cease, my son, to hear the instruction that causeth to err from the words of knowledge. So there comes a point where you say, okay, I've identified that, I'm not gonna listen to it anymore. But I just like the way they talk to you down there in Houston, because he puffs me up. He gets me to think I'm just gonna have a great day, because man, some good things are gonna happen to you today. Now y'all know he smiles real big when he does it. Cease my son, cease. to hear the words that causeth to err from the words of truth. Once we identify somebody as a false teacher, you ought to stay away from them. I'm gonna repeat that till you say amen. All right, beware should be the sign that we follow. We are not out of reach from the false teachers. I've been in the ministry for 30 years and I'm gonna tell you that the appeal is pride and pride always blinds the heart and mind. They get this idea, I mean, several people have told me over the course of the last 10 years, well, I understand that you don't know as much as I know. And God has revealed so much more to me than he has to you. I'm not looking down at you. I'm just ahead of you. And this elitism is apostate. So I lost a good friend to this movement of the pre-wrath position of the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. what has been labeled by a man's name who is a blithering idiot, whose name is Stephen Anderson. And this man, not Anderson Cooper, he's another, well, anyway. Stephen Anderson is a so-called fundamental preacher who I think is in jail right now, but he's a racist. He is a replacement theology to the point of quoting the Nazi party line, And he believes that the Lord's gonna come back somewhere after Revelation chapter number six. That you're gonna live through the tribulation, but that's not what I read in the Bible. You say, why would guys do that? Why would they have this kind of weird thing that they follow these ideas? And I believe the Revelation chapter four verse one is the rapture of God's people where we are called up into heaven and heaven opens up and John is taken to see the scenes in heaven. And one of the first things that happens is that we cast our crowns at Jesus' feet in chapter four, and chapter five, the seals are open, and that begins the judgment, and so nobody can be judged until the crowns are given, and so we have to go to heaven before the judgment starts. I'm not reading the Bible sideways. I'm reading it the way it's written. You say, what causes people? So I'll tell you what causes. You know, I know that they've been teaching this at schools, but I know something they don't know. And this appeal to your pride. You say, Pastor, I'll never give in to that. I hope not. But if you allow your pride to get a hold of your heart, you are susceptible and where you will end up, nobody knows. Only God knows how far you'll go. Man, be on guard, be aware. Not only is it giving heed, but it's seducing spirits. And seducing implies a deception. And then it says doctrines of devils. Here we have doctrine coming to the forefront again in this book. The Lord has teaching us that doctrine is very important. How important is doctrine to you? Do you notice the foundation of your practice? So I've been around people that say, oh, I don't care about the doctrine, I just wanna know what to do is right and wrong. Wait a minute, if you don't have the right doctrine, you're not gonna do right or wrong all of the time. Because doing right comes from knowing what you believe. And so if you know what you believe, no matter what opportunity or rather circumstances come your way, the doctrine is going to prepare you for the circumstances instead of trying to memorize a whole list of circumstances. I remember a fella told me that he was a good football player, but he just had trouble memorizing like over 75 plays in the playbook in his high school plays. And I don't know if your coaches gave you playbooks, we had playbooks for basketball and this and that, but he said he had the hardest time remembering, because he was trying to remember them each distinct from the others. I don't know if it's just that he had some problems, he's just a typical jock. He just never really came to really comprehend until he said the very end that each space between the linemen on the offensive line was numbered. And he was just inventing, like memorizing play one, this number, this number, and this guy's over here, this guy's over here, and then he would totally erase it. All he needed to do was remember, go through gap number two. Play four goes through gap number five. Right? I mean, this is an amazing thing to try to memorize each one of those 70. All he had to do is know a few systems and variations on those systems. So if you are ignoring doctrine, then you're trying to attempt to know what is right and wrong about every series of every possible thing, characteristic or circumstance of your life. and much easier would it be to know what God thinks. If you think like Christ, you'll do like Christ. You need a transformation of your mind in Romans 12 verse two. Be not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, casting down imaginations in 2 Corinthians 10. Right, everything right here. If you think like Christ, you'll do like Christ wants you to do. So doctrine is vital. That's why I ask you to do the ABCs of Christian growth, if you've never done them before. A refresher course on the things that we call our precious doctrines of our faith. Our third point today is the persuaders of this apostasy. So here are the things the way that they produce this apostasy, characteristics of apostates. In verse number two, it says that they are speaking lies. Well, anything the devil has any connection with is going to have lies. So I'm telling you truth. Truth must reign. Truth needs to be told. It needs to not be withheld. A pastor I know went off into apostasy, told me one time, he said, I don't tell my people what the truth, I tell them what I think they should know. And that kind of speaking lies eventually leads into an apostate belief system. Speak the truth. Secondly, he talked about hypocrisy. Hypocrisy, we know what that is. But false religion is filled with hypocrisy. Lots of outwards show, but no real relationship with God. You need to know why behind the biblical truth. And you'll always find, when they're doing stuff that's hypocritical, you'll find self-serving to be the reason why behind these things. To keep the people in check, to produce what they're wanting to get from the people. The difference is God's word, which sometimes doctrine is tedious. I get about this far into a sermon and I'm like, I hope you're enjoying this more than I am sometimes. Tedious. Doctrine can be, but doctrine should be considered precious. Very precious. And when people are turning the doctrines around and teaching something that's false, hypocrisy is always one of their methods. And then they do these things in order to suppress individual thought. Beware of those kind of churches where a person is there to serve the needs of the church rather than a church existing to build the families and people of the church. When the focus is all about do this and don't do that rather than be this and be that, you have a problem. You have performance-based Christianity. And the last thing in verse number two is a seared conscience. I remember this being explained where it says your conscience seared with a hot iron, explained that if you can go to a steer that's been branded and you can even take your knife and put it into the place where that brand is, he will feel nothing. because that has killed, the heat from that branding has killed the nerves in that skin. And you can take a knife and stick it in there and it won't affect that, he'll not feel it. And the hearts of people who are bent in sin, who are pretending to be religious on the outside, but are corrupt on the inside, their conscience has to be broken to be able to perform that. Look, be true to your conscience. Limit yourself. I know we all put on our best to come to, you don't have to put on a shirt and tie, but I do. You come to church in your shirt and tie, you know, I don't come to church in my undershirt. It's an appropriate issue. I'm not trying to show something I'm not by wearing a tie, but listen, I put my best foot forward. I don't think that's what we're talking about here. We're talking about people who are trying to look righteous, but inside their heart, they're full of wickedness. Wickedness. Now that kind of person represents a person who promotes apostasy. Promotes apostasy. And really, there isn't, again, there isn't any limit on how far you'll stray from the word of God. If those are the leaders of a church and they've got corruption going on behind the scenes, that they're hiding from their people. And one of the best things that a pastor can do is live a life that, as best I know how, is to be totally transparent to what the churches, the people see. Now in order to do that, you get to see all of my imperfections. Now follow me now. You have to see what's really here. I remember one of our teenagers in Belize, the pastor's son, Greg, he was like 16 before he actually went and bought some glasses. And he was commenting afterwards that he didn't, he grew up, he just never really knew. He was never tested. He never knew he wasn't really seeing everything. And then he said, he let it slip out, and I could tell his mom looked at him, scolded him, he said, "'Cause I got to church, I looked up, and I noticed the pastor has a bunch of pockmarks on his face." Yeah, and his mom caught him like, and he even stopped at the last part of that phrase like he caught himself, he wasn't supposed to say that. You see, if you're gonna live a transparent life as a pastor, you're gonna know that I'm not the best preacher. I'm not the most interesting person. And you're gonna find out that my jokes are not winning any kind of real prizes around here, right? My sense of humor is kind of messed up. And I give plenty of opportunity because of that for people to criticize the things that you see that are the imperfections below the surface. Now, I've been doing this a long time. As I said, I've been at this 30 years, and as I go back in my life, but if you're gonna be transparent, you're gonna let people know that. I'm not perfect. Sometimes you'll say, hey, pastor, I got a meeting at two, and I'm like, oh, well, I forgot. I'm in Salt Lake, I won't be there till tomorrow, sorry. Imperfections, I try not to be. And you can't look at the imperfections of a man and use it as an excuse for you to do wrong. But rather look at the fact that you see the imperfections of the preacher as a pastor desiring to not hide any sin in his life. I'm willing for you to look at my life. examine the things that I do, look at the things that I watch on my entertainment and find your way. You say, but pastor, you have your right to your privacy. I probably do, but as a pastor, I'm saying, hey, I want you to know that it's fair game because we cannot have a hypocritical church. It'll destroy your faith. It'll destroy your faith. It's destroying the churches all around us. Because these guys get up, and sometimes their sin, I mean, I don't know their lives. Maybe they're not hiding like a mistress or something. Maybe they're just flat, bum, lazy. But then they get to church, and they know how to perform. You don't need a performer. You need a prayer warrior. You need somebody to take the word of God and spoon feed it, and then declare it and proclaim it. Lastly is the practices of the apostasy. So we describe these things. Really there's only two that are here, forbidding to marry and commanding to abstain from meats. And then the rest of the next two, this verse and the next one, talk about how to receive those meats. But forbidding to marry, it's interesting that this is mentioned. I mean, the Roman Catholic Church has long required its priests and nuns to be celibate. Now that didn't happen until there was a mixture of the Christianity with the paganism in the days of Constantine in about 315 AD. But when they did that, they took the trappings of the pagan worship style, which included things like the candles being burnt, The nuns, the nuns were really vestal virgins, but they were actually used for immorality. Can you understand that without going into it? They were they were paid immorality to support the temples. But when they merged with Catholicism, they were claimed to be celibate. And then today, if you ask a priest, and I have, the Catholic priest down in Belize that was in charge, they called him Father Scott. He and I, I wouldn't call him father. Bible says not to call a man father. He just comes out, don't call any man father. He's talking about spiritually. And yet they totally blow that. Don't call a man father. So I'd say, hey, Scott. He'd say, hey, Don, get me back. Don't call me pastor. And we got to know each other to the point where we would sit down and talk and have a good time. I'd say we'd talk about things like, where in the world do you see sacramentalism in the Bible? Where in the world do you see worship of Mary or the use of icons to help your worship, what they call it? And then why in the world wouldn't you get married? And he'd say this, I'm just trying to be like the Apostle Paul in his journeys. Yeah, but it's not commanded in the word of God. But it isn't interesting that these things are cases like, we have several that abstain from meats. We have meatless Fridays, you remember that. I liked it. I grew up in a Catholic area in Cleveland and most of the little family restaurants all had really good sales on fish on Fridays. And there was really good walleye, good perch in Lake Erie and I could eat like all you can eat perch, all you can eat walleye back then for like $4. Amen. I like it. So it never bothered me, but the fact is that it's named here. But there's not, it's not just these two. If you go back throughout history, it was a number of these false teachers that come up with these non-biblical concepts for people to follow that really aren't supportable by the word of God. And Bible says, hey, watch out for that. That's not, this is apostasy. Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. It is called doctrines of devils. Wait a minute, we're talking not about the deity of Christ. We're not talking about the Trinity or atonement. We're not talking about soteriology or harmartiology or we're not talking about pneumatology or theology or Christology or these are all theologies. You know what we're talking about are two very simple things. And the Lord is making a statement here, I'm concerned about the simple things. If the Lord is concerned about the simple areas of our practice, of our faith, then I believe you'd find that he'd be very concerned about the stalwart pillars and foundation, for instance, of salvation and doctrine of ecclesiology, doctrine of the church, the doctrine of eschatology and times. that if the Lord is concerned about people that go around telling you don't get married and make sure you don't eat certain meats like the Muslims today or the Seventh-day Adventists that don't eat pork. You say, the Lord is concerned about apostasy on this level. He must be concerned about those things that are vital to the faith. Amen. So we can note that there are two doctrines relatively minor in each of these things are enough to categorize them as an apostate organization than how much more the specific things that we ought to get right. Right? And later in this passage, we're gonna come to a place where he says to give attention to reading and to exhortation and to doctrine. Look at the last verse in verse 16, take heed unto thyself and unto the doctrine, continue in them. The Lord considered the foundation of your faith, the teachings, the doctrine, the meat of the word. I'm not sure that today we have the right balance of faith and practice. Not sure. You say, Pastor, what do you mean you're not sure? I think there are some areas where it's okay to disagree. We've drawn the line as a church, and we're not going to change the line. Amen? But doctrine is mentioned much more because it is what I would call the genotype. So you have your genes in your, you know, your DNA has genes. You know, I'm not talking about wearing a pair of blue jeans, right? See, I told you my jokes were bad. You and I have effects that are seen, the color of your eyes, because of what's on your genetic code. The code would be called your genotype. And the effect would be called the phenotype. And the doctrines that we believe are your geno-faith. And the practice you have needs to always be connected so that it roots itself in something more than just, well, that's what everybody's doing. That's what the church says. It has to be connected and actually be a true phenotype of what's in your heart through the study of God's Word. That's, I think, what we need to focus on. Apostasy, yes, we need to watch, we need to beware, we need to fight it, we need to preach against it. On occasion, like tonight, when I talk about apostasy, it is impossible to preach on apostasy without naming examples specifically. And if you think I'm being harsh and judging, like the world says, oh, don't judge anybody, then come to Sunday school this Sunday. I'm teaching on judge not lest you be judged. That's Matthew chapter seven, it's the next verses. And you'll enjoy the fact that you're wrong. that I have a responsibility to warn the people about movements and people, wolves in sheep's clothing. They're walking about to destroy the faith of God's people. I have recently, tonight, I heard about a lady who's gone toward atheism, hindering her family from coming to the faith. We need to pray. I believe God's gonna get the victory. But it all started when in a Catholic church, where she was exposed to so-called Christianity, there were some problems or something happened, and as a result, as many people do, it's easier to believe in nothing than to know what you believed in was wrong and still find the truth. You should still pursue the truth. but it's easier to believe in nothing. The apostate doctrines taught by churches today are leading people astray and causing younger generations to abandon the faith entirely. The Bible tells us that we should, in Jude verse three, earnestly contend for the faith once delivered unto the saints. How important is doctrine to you? Maybe you need to surrender to God to get busy studying. Always learning, always going forward for God. Let's pray. Thank you, Lord, for your word today. Thank you for this truth. I pray that you'd help burn it in our hearts that we are going to be loyal, not to a church, but to a belief system that comes from your word. Loyal to a church only as far as it is loyal to the word. Loyal to each other because we've joined together in a covenant relationship so far as we follow your word. Help us to defend it, to believe it, to really practice it because we believe it, to have the true phenotype from an apparent genotype. So lead us today to connect those things together in Jesus' name. Amen.