And we are rolling. Hello, Facebook, and if you're watching this later, hello, YouTube. And thank you for joining us. I just mentioned YouTube, if you haven't visited before, we have a YouTube channel set up for the Household of Faith in Christ, where we archive and store all of these messages, so they're easy to find. If you've missed a message, you can go back and find it. That could become particularly helpful when we're working our way through a series. We did a series on 1 John, and so all of those messages are there. And you can consider what we're doing now kind of an extension of that, because we're working our way through 2 John, and then we're going to do 3 John. So we're doing all the epistles of John in sequence. And so if you want to kind of catch up on all of those, you're certainly welcome to do that by going to our YouTube channel. If you'd like to participate in the discussion we're going to be having as a group here in about a half hour or so, that's based upon the things that will be taught in the sermon, you can certainly contribute your thoughts. We'll try to interact with those. through the comments section. So you can add a comment and we can try to bring that up and talk about and share your comment with what we're doing here today. So that's all I have for now. We're gonna have to start here in a moment with Angela opening us in prayer and later I'm gonna ask Dina if she would close us in prayer. and Landon's gonna read 2 John for us, actually the first 11 verses of 2 John, and I would invite you to grab your Bibles and get them ready, because the sermon is on 2 John, so you're gonna wanna be able to interact, read along with Landon, and then interact mentally with the subject matter of the sermon. So, Angela, if you would open us a prayer. Dear Heavenly Father, we, your children, come together grateful that we have and the privilege to proclaim the name of Jesus Christ and to proclaim your word. And this is not ceremony for us, Father. We come here in worship. We come here with gratitude. We come here to you, still having peace that surpasses all comprehension, because we know that you are on the throne and you are still in charge. And it is by your grace that we are able to come and worship you We thank you for that. We are grateful. We ask for your Holy Spirit's presence to be in everything that is done this evening. We give this as a sacrifice to you, Lord Jesus, to your glory. Be glorified in the message this evening. We ask that you bring who needs to see this message, who needs to hear this message, bring them to this meeting, whether now or later. And whoever needs to stay away, Lord, just keep them away from it, but that your will be done. And in gratitude, Father, we thank you once again and ask that you bless this time together. In the precious name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, amen. Amen. All right, so Bible's open if you have them. 2 John, verses 1 through 11. The Elder to the elect lay me and her children, whom I love in truth, and not only I, but also all who know the truth, because of the truth that abides in us and will be with us forever. Grace, mercy, and peace will be with us, from God the Father, and from Jesus Christ, the Father's Son, in truth and love. I rejoiced greatly to find some of your children walking in the truth, just as we were commanded by the Father. And now I ask you, dear lady, not as though I were writing you a new commandment, but the one we have had from the beginning, that we love one another. And this is love, that we walk according to the commandments. This is the commandment, just as you have heard from the beginning, so that you should walk in it. For many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not confess the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh. Such a one is a deceiver and an antichrist. Watch yourselves, so that you may not lose what we have worked for, but may win a full reward. Everyone who goes on ahead and does not abide in the teaching of Christ does not have God. Whoever abides in the teaching has both the Father and the Son. If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not receive him into your house or give him any grief. This is the very word of God, inspired, inerrant, infallible, a perfect rule and guide for faith and life. Those of yours to hear, let them hear. Thank you for reading, Landon. So we are picking up where we left off last week. We covered the first six verses that Landon read last week, and we're gonna cover seven through 11 this week. This is a message, this two-part message that I've titled Truthers, lovers, and liars. And so we talked last week at the beginning about truth and what is that? Is there such a thing as truth? The struggle that people have with identifying and defining what is truth. We talked about love and some of the cute and quaint things that are used to talk about love, but they're not rooted in what the scriptural understanding of love is all about. We talked about our need to be able to handle the truth Some of us feel like we can't handle the truth. We can't handle the reality of things or sometimes we just can't grapple with the truth and understand it. And that is not true for Christ's church. Christ's church can and does handle the truth. Sometimes not as well as we might like, but we are called to handle it. We talked also last week about the authorship of this letter and the original audience and the historical setting. the dating, those sorts of things. We didn't spend a lot of time on that, but we did touch on those things. If you're interested in those sorts of things, you'll have to watch last week's video. And we started to talk a little bit about the nature of falsehood, and as part of the truthers, lovers, and liars, the liars brought the falsehoods. We're going to spend most of our time today talking about that. Now one of the things that is true, as we talk about the truth and love, is blending these two things together. That we have this obligation, this command on our lives, that we are to live out the truth, and we are to do so in love. And when we do this, we live the truth in love and the love in truth, and we are walking down the path that is Christ's way. We are walking in the way. We are doing the walk of life, as we've referred to it last week, even quoting Dire Straits. But we don't do this perfectly. We don't perfectly hang on to the truth and follow the truth all the time. We certainly aren't always loving. We sometimes fall prey to believing in lies or even speaking and uttering our own We don't do this well, but we're called to continually get better and better at it. It's called progressive sanctification in the church, this progression, this constant moving forward and getting better at being what a Christian is supposed to be, being more disciplined, more rooted in holiness and obedience and grounded in God's word. But we don't do this perfectly, which is why we need Jesus, who David does do this perfectly. He lived a human life on this planet perfectly. Perfect obedience. Obedient all the way to the cross where he died a horrible death. And then demonstrated that everything he had taught, everything that he said to be true about himself was in fact true about himself when he had his victory over death through his resurrection and ascension back up into heaven. Where he now rules and power and authority over his kingdom, because he is risen. This is truth. But there are liars who deny this truth, liars who deny the good news. These liars are distributors of fake news, not good news. You think that fake news is something new? Invented just within the last handful of years? Hardly. Remember that Ecclesiastes, chapter one, verse nine, it tells us that there is nothing new under the sun. Fake news has been around since the serpent interacted with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. When Eve falsely reported that They weren't even allowed to touch the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And the serpent falsely reported that you will not surely die if you eat of the forbidden fruit. And Adam, he contributed to these false narratives by standing idly by saying nothing to contradict the lies when he knew them to be false. And then he added even more injury to insult by blaming God, wagging an accusational finger at God, and his lie was, it's your fault, God, it's this woman you gave me. That's why this happened. Liars, all of them, liars. So liars have, they've been around forever. They deceive by neglecting the truth. They deceive by spreading falsehoods. This has been a part of human history since the beginning of human history, since the very first man and woman walked the earth. And so therefore, it has been a problem for Christ's church. It's been plaguing the church since the very first generation when followers of the way began to call themselves Christians. And why can I say with such confidence all the things that I've just said? Because the Apostle John says this. So let's look at 2 John. Let's turn to 2 John, verse 7. I say this because many deceivers who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh have gone out into the world. Any such person is the deceiver and the antichrist. There are liars in John's time. There are liars in ours. Can you recognize them? These liars, these deceivers, these supposed leaders of Christ's church? Who deny Christ, who is the very cornerstone and capstone of the church? These liars, they exist. They're out there. Or better put, or sadly put, they're in here. They appear to be within Christ's church with us, misleading so many. They say that Jesus came only in spirit, not in flesh. It's a big movement these days too, right? Spirituality, it's all about spirituality. Well, John, he writes about this, and he's talking about a spiritual movement of his era, which taught that tangible, physical things were dirty. And so God, he couldn't possibly have anything to do with that. He couldn't have possibly come in the flesh. I mean, to soil himself in this way, that would be unbecoming for God. So he must, therefore, he must have remained solely in the spiritual realm. Because the spiritual is good. And God is good. This totally misses the point that God created the material universe. And he said that it was good. And after he added Adam and Eve to his creation, he said that the creation was very good. Now, Sin has introduced brokenness into the world. I mean, humankind fell into immorality and has brought with it sorrow and sickness and death and lots of bad stuff. So there is, there is definitely something bad about the condition of the world right now. That is true, we're not denying that. And so therefore there is something rather astounding about the almighty and all-knowing and holy, holy, holy God condescending to become a man. I mean, that's astounding. But he is God. He can do what he wants. And he tells us that what he wanted to do was to love us so much that he did, in fact, send his son to live as Jesus of Nazareth on earth so that he could pay the penalty for his people's sin to restore us to being set apart image bearers as we were created to be. If God did not do this, then Jesus is not the Savior. Lord, maybe, depending on how you want to look at that. Savior, impossible. So by extension of what these false teachers teach, these deceivers, by extension of what they teach, they're saying that Jesus is not the Savior. False teachers are antichrist. That's what John calls them. Antichrist. Antiposed to, working against, not in alignment with, an enemy of Christ. And John tells us to watch out. Be on guard. Examine verses eight through 11. Watch out that you do not lose what we have worked for, but that you may be rewarded fully. Anyone who runs ahead and does not continue in the teaching of Christ does not have God. Whoever continues in the teaching has both the Father and the Son. If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not take them into your house or welcome them. Anyone who welcomes them shares in their wicked work. Boy, I don't know. I mean, this almost sounds serious, right? John is earnestly beseeching his readers, and that includes you and me. earnestly beseeching us to be on the lookout for wolves in sheep's clothing. Because these wolves, they undermine local churches. They don't continue in the teaching of Christ, so they don't have God. And if we follow after them, this is evidence that we don't have God either. But if we do have God, then we continue in the true teaching. And therefore we have evidence that we have God with us as Lord and Savior, as Father and Son, as the standard giver and the standard bearer. Now John says in verse 10 and 11, "'If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, "'do not take them into your house or welcome them. "'Anyone who welcomes them shares in their wicked work.'" What's he mean here? Well, he can't mean that we should avoid all contact with all liars, or we could not go and make disciples. We cannot share the good news with people who are lost in their sins or lost in their lives. But he is talking about those who are claiming to be one of us, even those who are positioned as leaders among us, especially those. And if we think of house, as God's church, and I find it helpful to think of house as the house of God in this context, house full of faith in Christ, then we should not welcome these false teachers into our local churches. And this brings us back to an earlier question. How are these false teachers to be recognized? How do we know when we see them, when we hear them? Well, they deny that Jesus is Lord and Savior. For one, they do this in a variety of ways. As we've already touched upon today, they deny who Jesus really is. And they put forward this false idea of who Jesus is. They deny that Jesus came in the flesh to accomplish his earthly mission. Now, they might do this denying in a way that doesn't hit you square upside the head. The net effect, the end result of what they're saying is to do exactly that, is to deny who Jesus is and what it is he came to do. I mean, how many quote-unquote Christian leaders have you heard say that Jesus is your example for a better life? Period, full stop. How many have you heard say that Jesus, He's like a genie who's been set free from his bottle, and so he's obligated to grant you your wishes, if only you have enough faith. How many of you heard say that Jesus, he's a means to social justice in our world today? Well, Jesus is an example to us. but he's more than our example. He's our representative, he's our high priest, he's our king. And Jesus, he does move mountains in response to the prayers of his people. But this is when those prayers seek his will and not our wishes. And Jesus is all about justice, equity before the law. We have to remember that his kingdom is not of this world. And he tells us that we're to call others into this kingdom, his kingdom, and not to merely work to renovate the kingdoms of this world with a primary focus on politics and a lesser focus on God. Now what about those leaders in the church? who deny the judgment of God. Jesus stands for righteousness and obedience. To say that he acquiesces to unrighteousness and that he looks the other way, when it comes to obedience, doesn't look upon that. To say something like that is to say that Jesus is someone other than who he is. This is to deny Christ, to deny what he did by coming in the flesh. What about church leaders who accept or perhaps even promote the idea that the Father and the Son, they're one and the same, there's no Trinity. There are some that say that Satan and Christ are brothers. There's some that will say, well, Jesus is savior in a kinda sorta way, depending on how you look at it, but he's not really the creator, and therefore he's not really Lord. I mean, some of these things I'm talking about here, these are big and obvious lies to some of us. But many of these lies, they're sneaky, they're subtle. And so they can fool some people sometimes. They can fool many people many times. I was flipping through the religious channels on my television one day, and on one of the channels there was a preacher who was promising blessings to you if only you would send in your love gift. To support Israel, of course. On another channel, there was a rather flamboyant man who was shaving another man's head as some sort of bizarre, strange performance art that kind of left the impression that, well, Jesus, he must be some kind of entertainer. And at the exact same time, on a third channel, at the exact same time, there were people who were laughing uncontrollably while the The pastor was crying uncontrollably. He literally said that he was without control of his faculties. He had lost all self-control. From them, we see a Jesus who manipulates emotions and creates disorder among his people. When we look at these examples, most of us, I think, we stand aghast. How could anyone? Be fooled by these men and women. But then we sit in pews or the increasingly popular theater style seats or in today's moment in time, sitting before a glowing screen and we uncritically listen to sermons. that never mention Jesus. Or if they do, they position him as, I don't know, the means to accomplishing the 12 steps to your best life now. Never mentioning the necessity of the cross. It's necessary because of our sin. Never mentioning that he is our friend and our king. Never helping us be reminded of just how beautiful is the thing that he has done for us. How beautiful is his creation. How beautiful is the hard love that he has for us. A hard love that invites us to share in his suffering. As we share in his kingdom advancement. Instead, they tell us what we want to hear or what they think we want to hear. The time of 2 Timothy 4, verse 3 is here. The time when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. Tickle our ears. Tickle, tickle, tickle. Just like what Fleetwood Mac sang decades ago. Tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies. Tell me lies, tell me, tell me lies. Oh, no, no, you can't disguise. You can't disguise, no, you can't disguise. Tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies. I'm so horribly sad and discouraged. is that these practitioners of telling lies, they do not even try to disguise their lies many times. But we uncritically listen to them anyway. Do not embrace these lying teachers. And for the love of God, I mean literally, for the love of God and for the truth of God, keep these liars from leading our church. Or you will share in their guilt. I might have accidentally painted a picture by being so dramatic of a universal church that is in shambles. And that's not true. The true church, the true church is guarding against falling into shambles. The true church is trusting in God's word, reading it and studying it, meditating upon it, teaching it, learning it, and therefore knowing that Christ is the perfect truth. and the perfect love. Indeed, Antichrist attacks the church in spiritual battle. But always remember, Christ's church cannot ultimately fail. This is a promise and a guarantee. Truth and love trounces liars, for sure and for certain. Let's pray. Father, we thank you that you are the embodiment of truth, and you have seen fit to reveal your truth to us in your word, and you have equipped us by your Holy Spirit to recognize the truth and to separate it from the lies. We ask that you would forgive your people for so easily being led astray. Help us, Lord, to recommit to studying your word, to communing with you, to trusting in Christ, to leaning upon the strength provided to us by the Paraclete, the Comforter, your Holy Spirit. We ask that you would help us to not only recognize those liars who are leading your flock astray, but to have the courage and the tenacity to root them out so that the true church would represent a true beacon of the only true hope that any of us can have, and that is the blood shed on the cross by our Lord, Savior, and King Jesus Christ. It's in his precious name that we pray. All right, so where are we on time? I think we're pretty good. We've got some time for discussion. Did that prompt any initial reactions? Well, I had written a kind of a synopsis, a very short, brief little synopsis that ties together the messages from last week and this week. So to remind us of what we talked about last week and how it connects with this week and stuff, and maybe this will spark some conversation among us here in the room and then perhaps also online. Christ's church, Christ's church is under attack. Spiritually attacked with questions. What is truth? What is love? What is the church and what is it to do? In a world filled with fake news, can anyone believe anything anymore? Can even God be trusted? There are those who challenge the faith of Christ followers by essentially asking, did God really say? This is a state of affairs in the 21st century. However, it's nothing new. This was a state of affairs in the first century too. The Apostle John wrote a letter to us way back then. Okay, John might have had a different group of believers specifically in mind when he penned what we now call Second John, but it is clear to contemporary readers that God had us in mind when this letter was written about 1950 years ago. Christ's church is home to the truth and to love. This is because it is home to Christ, who is himself truth and love. It is no wonder then that Antichrist works to undermine Christ's church with lies and division brought into the church's midst by deceivers and false teachers. The people of God must beware and remember what Jesus teaches his followers. This is what we're talking about here as we look at 2 John verses one through 11. And spoiler alert, Believers must be diligently on guard, but Antichrist loses because Christ wins. Anyway, I don't know if that's helpful in sparking any fodder for discussion. Well, I think the trickiest thing right now is that the momentum is behind the false teachers, and that's probably always the case. But because of the way the culture is, they're popular. And so they're willing followers. And how many people go to church and just go to church passively as opposed to actively? And so for them, they're not even seeing it as a problem. You know, it's not like they're gonna stand up there and say, I'm the Antichrist, and what I'm preaching is Antichrist. So, and they're not in the Word, and they're not, especially now, gathering with other believers. Yeah, I think it can be helpful for us to understand our place in human history, our time, and how it compares, because we have a tendency, it's just human nature to think that our life is the most important life, our moment in time is the most important. If things are good, they've never been this good before. If things are bad, they've never been this bad before. The tendency to hyper-personalize and make more important the contemporary moment. But if we look at history, there have been cycles. There are always lies attacking the church that has never stopped, but there does seem to be times, like when Dina mentioned, where there's a momentum that seems to be winning the day. But this isn't a new phenomenon. As we said in the message, Ecclesiastes, there's nothing new under the sun. So previously, back in the 18th century, was it the 3rd and 4th century, the 4th and 5th century? Getting my dates a little bit muddled in my head right now, but when all the really famous church councils were going on, this is when some of the doctrines of the church were actually, pen was put to paper to clarify. The church had always believed certain things to be true until they were getting attacked by liars. And so all the people who are defenders of the truth said, we need to get together and articulate specifically what we believe and why, and then we've got these standards that we can point to and say, no, no, no, this is orthodox belief, and anything else is other. So there were people that were attacking, you know, Jesus wasn't really divine, and they had to clarify, no. He is. Or Jesus didn't really die, he had to clarify that. Or the Trinitarian nature of the Godhead, that was denied. The means of salvation was argued and clarified. And then another big cycle, when the church had lost its way and there was a battle, kind of an ascendancy of those who were truth defenders in the church. I guess it'd be the 15th and 16th century, the decades leading up to the Reformation and then the Reformation and the decades following it, there was a battle being waged for truth against the lies, and that was a very difficult, challenging time for the church. So I would say that 400 years-ish after Christ, 1500 years-ish after Christ, really significant, difficult times that are akin to where we are now. And this isn't new for us even now. The church has been under attack from what, and I don't mean this politically, I mean theologically, from the theological left. the liberal theology that's been infecting and attacking the church for 150 years now. So really the 20th and now the 21st century, there's been this huge battleground where the church is in a war for the truth. It was in a war for the truth 1,500 years ago, and of course the truth won out. and it was in a battle for the truth 500 years ago, and the truth won out, and the truth will win out yet again, but we are, so when we feel like this is the worst ever, not necessarily, but when we feel like, man, it feels like this is about as bad as it's ever been, that's probably true. There's some ebb and flow, there's a cyclical nature to history, a cyclical nature to how things unfold for the church, and so I don't want us to magnify our moment in history, At the same time, I don't want us to diminish our moment in history. That's why I'm so passionate. This is one of those moments. This is one of those moments. And when these moments face Christ's church, a lot of really good men and women, they go down in history remembered as martyrs a lot of times. It takes an awful lot to stand up. and for the truth when everybody around you is perpetrating lies. Do we have that kind of courage? If you're truly part of the church, you do. Even if you don't have it, the Holy Spirit will give it to you when you need it. But right now, there's so many people that are passing themselves off as believers that aren't. There's so many people that are perceived to be leaders of the church, and I'm not even sure they're members of the church. Now, in fairness, there are some that I'm very suspicious of and what they're doing lately that, I mean, God knows their heart and knows the situation for their salvation. So I'm kind of hoping they're just a little bit confused, a little wobbly, a little bit offline, a little bit, you know, off of center, their plumb line has been jostled, and they're gonna swing back and they're gonna realize the error of their ways. A good example of that in our present context would be churches who closed. It's my opinion that no church should have ever stopped meeting. I don't think there's a biblical argument to be made for that. Obviously people can disagree, I would argue they're wrong. Their disagreement is, to my way of thinking, their disagreement is not with me, their disagreement is with scripture. But even if you wanted to say, okay, you know what, early on maybe wisdom and better judgment said we should pause meeting for a very short amount of time. Okay, I'm willing to grant that and say it's possible that I'm wrong enough that pausing for a short period of time is okay and appropriate. But now we're coming up, what is it, 10 months? I think, something like that? It'll be 45 weeks. Wouldn't it be a year? Didn't this start February? Was that March 16th? 45, yeah, 10 months. March 16th was the first day of the shutdown. There are churches that are still not meeting. Why on earth are you not still, at this point, do you ever plan to meet again? And who gets to make that decision? Who has the ecclesiastical, the ruling authority for your congregation? God and his word and the ordained leaders of that particular congregation, or some secular pagan out there who's gonna tell you what you can and can't do. At some point, the rubber's gotta meet the road, and so that's an example now where people have been wobbly, and so people early on who might've paused meeting for a week or two, or even a month or two, and then they realized, whoa, we can't do this forever. John MacArthur's a good example in California. John MacArthur, his church stopped meeting for, I don't know, was it like six weeks, eight weeks, something like that? I don't know if you know. Yeah, it was a couple months, I think. And then he realized, you know what? We can't keep doing this. We're going to start meeting again. And they have. And they've had great attendance. And there hasn't been any horrible illness or anything on them. And they've gotten badgered and beaten up. They've gotten bad press. And they've been attacked by the governing authorities. But they're like, we have a higher governing authority. They've been attacked by the church. Not the true church. The institutional church. The institutional church. The visible church. The visible church. Right, because we haven't talked about that much in the context of household of faith in Christ, but I'm an adherent to the idea of there's the church that we see, the visible church, visible to human eyes, and the church that God sees, the true church. Now, there are some people that are part of the true church that are also part of the visible church, most of them would be. part of the Visible Church. There are some people that are part of the True Church that you might not even identify as being part of the Visible Church. They're not yet connected with a church yet, or you don't interact with them. So it's not like the True Church is a subset necessarily of the Visible Church. There's a significant overlap. But there is a very large percentage of people, sadly in my opinion, that are in the Visible Church that are not part of the True Church. I don't know what those percentages are. Yeah, they don't even know. People are so, they're self-deluded, they're self... How could they know it? The word convicts. Right? It convicts onto repentance or it convicts onto obedience. But the word convicts. And if they're not hearing the word proclaimed, they're never being convicted. So, they feel like, oh, I'm fine. And sadly, some of them, you're not fine. Hear me. I'm not saying this as a negative judgment against you. I'm making a positive judgment of what is real and true. If you are not recognizing the truth of your sin and the necessity of you trusting in Jesus Christ and his sacrifice, you are in peril. And you can know that you're actually following the truth, you're walking in the way, that you have eternal life. You can know this because you demonstrate love. And what does love mean? We talked about this a couple weeks ago. Do you remember the definition of love? The scriptural definition of love? It's obedience to God's commands. That's love. Because God is love, and so if you obey his commands, you're being loving. What does God command? There are certain things God prescribes for his people, and if you're not doing those things, why not? And maybe you don't know any better because your leadership isn't telling you the truth. Being a follower of Christ, it's not a rose garden. That old song from the 1970s, that old country song, God never promised you a rose garden. Lynn Anderson, I think, sang that song. I've mentioned it a number of times. I don't know if I've mentioned it in the household of faith context. The Apostle Peter, in his epistles, he talks about the suffering that Christ's people have. It is a suffering that is promised and guaranteed to you. And you are to recognize it and understand and appreciate it It's a blessing. It's counterintuitive, but it's a privilege. And how is it a privilege? It's a privilege because our whole aim is to know Christ. And the more we know him, the more we can follow after his example and be more Christ-like and be the image bearers we were made to be, as I referenced in today's sermon. Well, one of the ways you can know someone is you can enter into their world. So if somebody is rejoicing, you enter into their joy and you share it with them. And in the sharing, you know them better. And it's the same when someone is suffering. You enter into their suffering and you know them better. So it's a privilege to enter into Christ's suffering. And if you don't feel, oh, I've been a Christian for 75 years and I don't feel like I've suffered a day in my life, you're probably not walking the walk. Well, the other way that that looks like doesn't necessarily have to be that peril strikes you. It means that you have God's heart. So when you hear of suffering in other places, you pang the way God does, like with the human trafficking. If you are not grieved at your core, or abortion, or any of those things, That's suffering, too. To bear that, and to bear that burden, and to be so grieved over that, that's a type of suffering that is godly, that is sharing in God's heart, that is acknowledging the wrong, the awfulness of that, and to grieve that, and to cry out in prayer against that, that's a heavy burden. to bear at times. There have been times, and I know Angela shares this as well, where I've been woken from my sleep to pray, because there's such an awfulness, such an angst that I have for that injustice, for that evil. And that's God's heart. That has nothing to do with me. That's God's heart. That's suffering at some level, because then I feel cruddy that whole day at work, because I was Had a bad night, so to speak. So that's also part of it, and I think people don't necessarily see that as a type of suffering. Yes, it made me, as you were commenting, it made me think of the Beatitudes, and when Christ is seen, who's blessed? And who's blessed sometimes is a little counterintuitive in these Beatitudes, you know? Blessed are the poor in spirit. Blessed are those who mourn. Why are we blessed when we mourn? It's because we agree with God that there's evil out there and there's injustice and we're mourning. And then he goes to say, it goes on as a flip side of it, that to say, woe to those who are getting full now, because they're getting there, or being, forgive me, I'm paraphrasing. Woe to those who are happy now because they're receiving their joy in full. Right, right, right, right. You know, so it's, you're happy in the midst of all the tremendous, evil it means you must be kind of dead to it and sensitive to it and you know or you agree with it right and if you're in that state what are you doing to combat it? So you're kind of in league with those, whether it's passively or aggressively, you're kind of in league with those people who are doing that kind of stuff. And guess what? God says, I'm going to judge it. And you're going to get swept up in that. So the suffering, I think maybe people immediately go to the super examples, like people being martyred in a coliseum by lions. I mean, that's certainly suffering, but I think most of it, yeah, you're exactly right, most of it is, you just simply, you have the same heart as God does on things, and you mourn when he's mourning. It's painful, but at the same time, I think you see it as a blessing, because you're like, oh, OK, I lost some sleep praying, but I believe my prayers have made a difference. I believe my prayers deliver somebody. I believe my prayers help to advance God's kingdom here on Earth. And so there is a comfort in it, but definitely, yeah. The suffering, if you don't enter into Christ's suffering, Like Paul said, you need to check and see if you're still in the faith. Right. Because Troy is absolutely correct. It's a guarantee if you believe in the Lord that you're going to suffer. Hey, stop, stop, stop, stop. Angel, stop, stop. Fruitcake. You're so squirrely all the time. We're going to probably have to keep her in the letter from the front Saturday night. too much distraction. One of the things that I think is an important point for us to add in this context, before I add it, is there anything you wanted to jump in and say? Because I've kind of dominated and Dina found her path into the discussion and Angela did. I'm kind of just listening to you. For the most part, people are not going to come up to you and say, oh, you're a Christian? I'm gonna persecute you, therefore. It's not because you call yourself a Christian that you're most often gonna find yourself being persecuted, because lots of people call themselves Christians, and they don't do anything different than the world, and so they don't put themselves in a position to be persecuted. But what you're gonna find, if you're a Christian who's actually walking the path of righteousness, that you are following the way of Christ, then they're going to not accuse you of being a Christian, they're going to accuse you of being a bigot, of being stupid, of being narrow-minded, of being intolerant, of being judging. You're a hater. They're gonna accuse you of all these things. If you take a stand for what is right and true, according to God's standard, they are going to accuse you of all of the things that go with being a Christian. So you won't find yourself being persecuted because you're a Christian. You're gonna find yourself being persecuted for some other reason, but the real thing is there, you actually are a brother and sister in Christ, and that's what the root of the persecution is all about. Well, last thing is we can clean up our mess here and wrap up our time together. Let's think about where our true hope lies, where the emphasis of our thinking is. I've been thinking about this, you know, of late. There's been a lot of talk, and rightfully so, right? A lot of people who are mourning, to use the attitude that that Angela brought up, people are mourning, people are sad, discouraged over the amount of division that they see within America. The citizenry is very divided right now, more so than at any point that I can recall in my lifetime, and possibly more so than any time since the mid-1800s, I don't know. And so certainly we should be concerned about that. And people are talking about all the deception, and their concern, and there's a lot of consternation over the deception, and the media's lying to us, and the ones that are supposed to be our truth-tellers, you know, we can't trust. We can't even trust Fox News, the conservatives say. Like, who can we trust? And so all the deception, people are bemoaning that, and rightfully so. And then of course, for a long time, people have been complaining about our government and the horrible leadership that we have in our government. I mean, we have a vacuum of leadership. They're self-interested, they're conniving, they're doing backroom deals and stuff, and so absolutely we should be concerned about that. And of course, with the newer movement that most of us just kind of came to, began to come to grips with this past year, this social justice wokeism kind of a thing, where if you're of European descent, therefore you have less melanin than others, and particularly if you're older and a male, you are guilty. You are guilty and there is no redemption from that, you just are. You are a racist, quote unquote, period. And there's nothing you can do about it. There's no rescue from your racistness. And we should push back and be upset about the whole cultural stuff that's going on. But I listed all those things to provide examples of if our focus is there, do we have even more concern on those same issues for the pride of Christ. Do you find yourself having more sorrow and sadness when there's division among the citizenry than there is among the membership of Christ's church? Do you find yourself spending more time in prayer about the lies that are being told by the media and the horrible leadership that we have in our government? And even if it's positioned in a positive, that we're praying for our government leaders, which we should do, we're commanded to. Are we praying for our church leadership with as much, I would say, more earnestness? Are we concerned about the deception that's being passed off as truth by the pastors and teachers and Sunday school leaders and that sort of stuff and these electronic ministries? Do we have more concern for that and what it's doing to the church than it's doing to our culture and our society and our country? And are we concerned about the social justice movement because it sounds mean and wrong, but we're not even more concerned about how that's affecting the proclamation of the gospel inside the church? Because if we start teaching that in the church, That's completely contrary to the Gospel that says that Christ took upon Him all sins. So even if it's true that somebody who's older and white of European descent, even if that's true, that that makes them ethnocentric and hateful towards people who are different from them, even if Christ bears the burden of that sin at the cross, too, So why would we want anybody preaching a message that says white people are guilty? That's all there is to it, and you gotta go ask for forgiveness from everybody, and they can forgive you, but you're not really off the hook because you can't escape it. That's what the whole woke movement is about. So are we more concerned about the cultural impact of the woke movement, or are we more concerned about the church impact of the woke movement? I just think it might talk to us about where our heart really is. If we're praying more, and concerned more, and talking more, and spending our time more on things that have to do with the government, and the media, and the cultural movements, and what's happening in Hollywood, and all of that sort of stuff, and not focusing even more time, energy, and care towards Christ's bride, our priorities are misplaced. It doesn't mean you don't care about the other things. What I'm saying is those go on a lower shelf and the concerns of Christ and his bride go on an upper shelf. And I'm not sure that that's mostly what I see. And to be honest, I'm convicting myself as well as I say these things. There are too many moments when I get wrapped up in the happenings of the world and my concerns are tied up in the things of the world. And we need to be concerned about the things of the church, because the church is salt and light in the world. If the church is doing what's right and true, then the world benefits from that. And if we're so busy worrying about the world, and we're neglecting the church, if there's a reason why they tell you when you're on a plane that masks fall from the sky, to put the mask on your own face first before you worry about taking care of your kids, because you don't take care of, if the church isn't taken care of first, It's of no use to the world. I'm not saying the world doesn't need that gas mask too, but we're not gonna be in a position to give it the gas mask that it needs if we haven't taken care of being guardians of the truth in the church. So, a lot of people watching online, if you feel like you're in a church where your pastor's lost his way, have a conversation with him. Share your concerns. Hear him out. Maybe you're wrong in your concerns. Maybe he will show you how, no, no, no, what are you talking about? And you'll be persuaded and he'll be proven righteous. But if he's not, you know, there's church discipline avenues and different church government issues you can deal with there. I would encourage you to not stand idly by because I'm telling you, if it didn't hit you between the eyes, when I read it and then when I drove it home in the sermon, If you don't do anything about these false teachers in your church, it's not only them that stands guilty before God. If you don't do anything about it, you're guilty too. So, in love, I share that truth with you. We've got to do better. And we will do better, because Christ's church wins. Anyway, I guess we'll close with a word of prayer? Sure. Heavenly Father, thank you so much that you win, you won, you're victorious, that your church will always prevail. It's a promise, and we thank you for that, that it's not up to us, but in the same breath, it is up to us in the sense to repent and to hold one another accountable in the body of Christ. I pray that you would strengthen your body, that you would pour out the Holy Spirit to encourage us, to strengthen us, that we would have the boldness to confront the lies, the ability to do this unabashedly, but also with love. We know that this power comes from you, and it's in this power that we pray. Lord Jesus, in his name, amen. Amen. Next week, we're gonna look at the tail end of 2 John, so we're gonna continue our series through the epistles of John next week. For those who paid attention and stayed with us all this time, appreciate it, thank you, and I see a hallelujah, somebody said, so hallelujah right back at ya. God bless.