Romans 16_17-23 Avoid Those Who Divide the Church
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Summary
Division is the enemy of the body of Christ, and is the root cause of all evil in the world. The Bible is clear in its condemnation of division and calls us to avoid it. In this episode, Pastor Ken continues our discussion of division in the church by discussing the dangers of false teachers and division among the brethren.
Transcript
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Amen. Going off the heels of what Pastor Joseph just said, it is extremely rare for a child
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to take notes on a sermon if he or she never sees their parents doing so. And so if we
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would like to create a generational church of note-taking Christians, it begins with
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the parents. Now, today we are going to continue on our discussion of Romans 16, 17 through 23.
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The title of the sermon is Avoid Those Who Divide the Church. Avoid Those Who Divide the Church.
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Now, when studying scripture, I have learned to never neglect the introduction and the conclusion
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In fact, Martin Lloyd-Jones spent many, many years
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preaching on Romans and stopped at the end of 15.
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just because a passage doesn't have any doctrine
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doesn't mean that it doesn't have any instruction.
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it says that all Scripture is breathed out and is profitable for teaching.
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That would include the lineage lines and all of the difficult passages of Scripture
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filled with names and greetings and conclusions and salutations.
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If you recall, two weeks ago we studied the first 16 verses of this book or this chapter,
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We talked about the viability or was there grounds for female deacons?
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We talked about the structure of the early church, debunked the idea that Junia was an apostle,
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and we understood that the holy kiss was a custom of that era, not a command for all time.
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Now today we turn to 17-23, which is really broken up into two sections of Scripture.
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Verses 17-20, Paul addresses this matter of division.
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And he goes on also to teach about false teachers.
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and i don't know if there is a more relevant passage of scripture to the modern church
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than to talk about divisiveness so i believe that it will be certainly helpful and fruitful
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for each of us to hear in verses 21 to 23 it's just the salutations the closing remarks
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of Paul and those who are with him. Now, if you've been in church for any length of time,
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you know that division is the most effective tool of the enemy. It causes the most pain,
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the most harm, the most distrust, the most confusion, the most lasting damage to the body
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of Christ. Beyond that, I would say the division also plants the seeds of doubt about the power
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of Christ in the eyes of the world. We know that Jesus says in John 17, 17, or 17, I forgot
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the specific verse, but 17, his high priestly prayer, Father, I pray that they are one like
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unity is actually the means by which the world believes that Christ was sent from God.
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One pastor said, division in the church always breeds atheism in the world.
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if you sow division in the church you are a form of antichrist that's how extreme
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the biblical theological argument against division truly is
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you should be just as afraid to be divisive as you should be afraid to cheat on your wife or husband
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It should be something that is of the utmost carefulness.
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The entire testimony of Scripture talks about God hating divisive people.
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Proverbs 16, 16 through 9, sorry, Proverbs 6, 16 through 19 says,
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And this is a Hebrew poetry that is structured climactically.
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So the last thing is the most important thing.
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There are six things that the Lord hates, seven that are an abomination to him.
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Haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans,
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feet that make haste and run to evil, a false witness who breathes out lies,
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In other words, all of those things the Lord hates,
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but the Lord hates the one who sows division the most.
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Now, it destroys everything that you've built for decades.
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Many congregations have been burned and leveled because of divisiveness.
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When the devil sees a church warm in faith, he blows upon the coals of division.
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we have to guard against that reality you want peace in this church take these passages of
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scripture today as a warning to each and every one of us as we will see divisive people are never alone
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They bite people and then they recruit and they multiply.
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It's this gross fellowship of grievances that forms up and turns into this fire that burns the entire congregation and splits churches in twos and threes.
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I don't know about you, but I've seen church splits.
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I don't care outside of it being because of the sheer fact that it's full-blown heresy or unrepentant sin in leadership.
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It is so incredibly sad to see among God's people.
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so today we're going to look upon paul's instruction regarding the matter of division
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and false teaching if you look at verse 17 he says i appeal to you brothers
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to watch out for those who cause division and create obstacles contrary to the doctrine that
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you have been taught, avoid them. So first, Paul uses this kind of emphatic language. He says,
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I appeal. Your passage depends on what translation you're using. It might say,
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I beseech or I implore you. It becomes this kind of serious call to action here at the end of his
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letter. It can almost be translated as, I beg of you. And notice that he uses the word brothers.
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In our feministic culture, we can't understand the reality of the past.
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He might address the women, but he's expecting that these letters are delivered to men who will be leading the church and the congregation.
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The word brothers in the Greek is a delphos or a delphoi in the plural.
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That's the duty of men to watch, to be vigilant.
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Well, because we know that women watch with their emotions.
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In fact, it's the great reason why America has fallen into so many deceptive laws
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is because the 19th Amendment allowed women to vote instead of household voting.
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Household voting where a man comes together with his family and says,
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what do we think? Covenantally, let's get together and let's cast a vote as a household.
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but when women vote they vote with their hearts and they vote with their emotions
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and it is taking a really wonderful and glorious and nurturing and compassionate thing that is used
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to raise up godly kids and to love people and to have mercy ministries and it's being perverted
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to be used by politicians and different people to to essentially get them to be manipulated
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And so Paul lays this duty of looking out for divisiveness,
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looking out for false teachers at the feet of the men.
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and watch out for false teachers, both of them.
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Now, the word watch out in the Greek is skopeo.
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And skopeo is the word that we get for the English word scope.
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And the word there, it really means to fix your eyes,
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It's more than just a, hey, keep an eye out for that.
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No, it's watch, look for it, pay attention, fix your eyes on something.
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And so we're to scope out these two groups, those who are divisive and those who bring in false teaching.
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And so I want to deal with these two issues and let's start with division.
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So contextually, we have to ask ourselves, well, what is Paul talking about?
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Because again, we're not going to just project ourselves onto the text.
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We want to find out, why is he even bringing this up?
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Is there some context within Romans that gives us some sort of idea that we go,
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Is there any text that will clue us in to a particular person or group that he might have in mind?
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In Romans, we deal with two groups causing division in doctrine, or division in false doctrine.
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And the idea is these people would say grace is so good that we can keep on sinning willfully
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because the more we sin, the more we magnify God's grace.
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And those are those people who want to bring Christians who are under grace back under the law.
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It's these people that are want to get you back into religious externalism or what we might call legalism.
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And Paul spends a lot of time, chapters two through four, chapters nine through 11, chapters 14 and 15, talking about the risk there.
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now this doesn't mean that paul doesn't uh that this principle isn't just a general principle
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this is something that he would tell to all the churches watch out for divisive people
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watch out for false doctrine but again we must understand the author's original intent
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before we start assigning the text to some broader principle or to broader meaning
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And so, men, we are to watch out for those who cause divisions.
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And as a pastor, my first line of defense here is prayer.
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I know my wife can attest, almost every night when we pray at our dinner table,
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I am praying for the protection against divisiveness.
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divisiveness, because I know that all that we have built can be destroyed by the flame
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of some fool that is a divisive brother or sister.
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Second, as a pastor, and I think men, I'm calling you to this, is that we are to develop
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a sensitivity to the subtle signs and seeds that give birth to division.
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These are the things, the warning signs that you go, I'm on guard.
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And then all of a sudden, poison is all over everybody.
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And so I believe the skills here are essential.
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Vigilant watchfulness and righteous, active peacemaking.
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And then you need to know how to bring about peace.
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Peace with your wife, peace with your children, peace with a brother, peace with a sister.
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Now, division, again, can be caused by both men and women.
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In fact, I see many instances throughout church history.
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We often see heresy entering in by the men.
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And in modern times, we see division often entering in by the women.
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Now, again, it doesn't mean the division doesn't happen by men.
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My experience in my generation as a pastor is the division either happens by men or happens by women or by men who act like women.
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It is emotionally led men or women who are not in subjection to their husband or to their pastors or to their fathers.
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And this, I hope, will make a lot of sense to you.
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Division begins when someone has a complaint or an offense, but lacks the courage to address it.
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Division begins when someone has a complaint or an offense, but lacks the courage to direct a conversation to it, to confront it.
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So what they do, historically, is they will grieve and air their grievances, what we often call gossip.
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Unfortunately, we live in a time with many effeminate men who are also afraid to confront with courage a discussion that might need to be had,
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and instead turn into women and start heckling and gossiping with other men.
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people don't deal with their fear of confrontation, they
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and see who can feel bad for me. Just how I feel. Maybe
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you have the same grievances and they start to build alliances.
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They start recruiting. They start building out a fellowship
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I would rather you take your flame somewhere else
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than just stay here and keep burning things down.
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So men, again, a great way to guard against division
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is to be watchful, to encourage when someone comes to you
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You should bring that to the person who offended you.
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I'm tired of this, hey, oh, yeah, yeah, I get that too.
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you know. No. If someone brings a complaint about another person to you,
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the biblical model, according to Christ, is to bring
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what does it say? Well, then bring two or three.
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together to see if we can get the facts straight
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the process is supposed to get more and more public but controlled it's supposed to get more
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and more humiliating oh you're gonna deny your sin oh well let's bring more people into it
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oh you're still gonna deny that you've sinned against this brother then we're gonna bring
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more people in. This is the proper process to deal with offenses and contentions, and the vast
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majority of them, the vast majority of them, can be dealt with privately on step one. Do you know
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how many times a church didn't have to split just if one person would have just been willing to walk
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up to somebody and have a private conversation with humility and grace. The church can be saved
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by the faithfulness and willingness to confront people instead of having the cowardice
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to become a divisive member of a church. Now next, I want to speak to the group that we are called
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to observe which is those who quote create obstacles contrary to the doctrine that you
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have been taught now false doctrine can only be recognized and measured against the backdrop of
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sound doctrine the reason false okay i often say this at the big mega churches there's not a lot
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of correction around false teaching because nobody believes nobody understands what they believe
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now in a reformed church where we have a confessional church we have a standard of
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understanding of interpretation and we can measure what somebody else might be teaching
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if it is in contrary to what has been taught according to the word of god and so the first
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step is that we need clarity. Now, I think at some of the bigger megachurches, you do have a
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sense of unity. In fact, you have a unity. I think it's a superficial unity. It's a unity that
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if everybody actually stood and you stood together and you went up to every single person and you
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asked them what they believed truly about a variety of different important topics, there
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would be a wild variation but because they stick to kind of the shallow waters of the gospel
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they never actually expose the vast variations of what they believe and so it's a superficial
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unity though it is a form of unity now it's more difficult to have unity with more clarity
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the more clarity you have the more opportunity you have to be different upon it and so you still
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to have the ethic of being willing to be unified without being uniform and it's very important
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to learn how to have peace and not to be so dogmatic that you're separating on secondary
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and tertiary matters left and right that's what creates the splintering of the reformed community
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and all the factions and arguments that's going on on social media
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we need to be able to disagree but with grace and not divide among one another
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now every generation faces heresies okay every generation faces heresies all heresy all heresies
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fall down in five categories five categories the nature of god the nature of christ the nature of
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church, the way of salvation, and the mode of revelation. When I say the mode of revelation,
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I mean, is it scripture alone? Is it tradition? Are there modern day prophets and apostles? Okay,
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those are the categories. Those are the categories. Now, in my experience, the vast majority of
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heresies that we deal with in the church these days has to do with category number three,
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the way of salvation. And I say that because it turns into particular arguments around legalism.
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Generally speaking, that is what I fight against most as a pastor, not necessarily even amongst
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our congregation, but certainly in the greater ministry that I have in the world. Now, Paul says
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Who create obstacles, contrary to sound doctrine.
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Now, the term obstacles suggests some form of added works,
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indicating that Paul is likely addressing legalism.
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That's probably what he has in mind here, is legalism.
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You know, he might be thinking of the requirement
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that some people, you must be circumcised if you're going to be saved, or you must keep
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the Sabbath on Saturday if you're going to be saved, or you have these old covenant duties
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or these festivals, whatever it may be. But I do believe that he has
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the most common example of this is found, I believe, in the Roman
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which teaches that salvation requires faith plus
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All these sacramental meritorial systems that have been put in place, it replaces Christ's, it is finished with, it is never finished.
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You have to do these things to maintain your salvation.
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And then it piles on more and more extra-biblical realities.
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I think this applies well, he says, to those zealous cultists who come around so frequently to our doors with books under their arms that claim to be the explanations of the scriptures, but which are so contrary to its teaching and doctrine, end quote.
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in matthew 15 13 to 14 jesus says he's responding by the way to the disciples
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who are frustrated with the words of the pharisees and jesus says every plant that my heavenly father
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has planted or every plant that my heavenly father has not planted will be rooted up
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Now, this doesn't mean that pastors and teachers like Paul or other ministers
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should avoid these people to the same extent as the average Christian.
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I recently had some Jehovah's Witnesses come to my house,
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and i spent an hour debunking every single one of their claims i do not expect my wife to do the
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same and in fact i don't want her to because as you will see in this passage of text they will
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use smooth talk and flattery they are a threat and if you're not ready and totally able to defend
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if you're just a new believer, you're not ready
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i've actually felt a temptation when you're when i'm writing my book right now reformed versus rome
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and there's this temptation of kind of misplaced sympathy for those who are promoting error
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But it's easy to kind of find yourself agreeing with portions of what they say.
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So you're looking and you're like, man, this looks pretty good.
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And you go, you know, we really are aligned with like 90-something percent, you know?
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and so it's easy to find yourself kind of agreeing with those portions while the serious lies that
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corrupt the gospel just kind of fall to the backdrop of the conversation and you're willing
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to find some sort of unity with these people that are leading people to hell it's very common
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and again I even found myself like huh man I like that point this guy's really smart
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I find this great appreciation for these Roman Catholic scholars.
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I had to remind myself of just kind of the hellish nature of Roman Catholicism.
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Again, there's kind men and women in all of these cults,
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I might have a great time having a drink overlooking the lake.
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But you cannot forget that they are deceived and that they are interested in deceiving others.
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They do not hold a biblical gospel and many of them will perish
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and they will be judged for their perversions and for those that they have misled.
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Jesus says, for any of those who mislead one of these little ones who believe in me,
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it is better for you to have a millstone wrapped around your neck and thrown into the bottom of the sea.
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Deceivers are deceptive because they look like they're not deceivers.
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have you ever convinced people of false doctrine and maybe repented of it later
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this verse was speaking of you at that time it's a scary verse for such persons do not
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it says what do they serve contrast clause the word but right there but what do they serve
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their own appetites and by smooth talk and flattery they deceive the hearts of the naive
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have you ever been a part of a church split and how much alliance building the recruiting goes on
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do you know how much smooth talk and flattery happens in that environment it's wicked it's
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who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven,
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prophesy in your name? Do we not cast out many demons in your name? Do we not do many mighty
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works in your name? And then I will declare to them, I never knew you. Depart
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of this entire passage of scripture is this. Spiritual activity does not
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equal spiritual security. You can do all the things for God in the world.
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And the Roman Catholics are out there. They're doing it. And the Mormons are out there. And
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spiritual activity does not equal spiritual security.
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by this woman. I'm going to paraphrase her words. She said, if you pray to Mary and later find out
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that it wasn't necessary, there's no harm done. If you pray to past saints and discover that they
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never heard you, there's no harm done. If you take the Eucharist and it's not really transformed the
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body and the blood, you're still going to heaven. But if Roman Catholics are right, you avoid these
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things, you have missed the way of salvation.
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and he must be worshipped in spirit and in truth
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go give your worship and praise to something else that is not Christ
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commandment there shall be no other gods what is the second commandment there shall be no
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tell us that he is to be worshipped, but he tells us how he ought to be
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worshipped. I have now taught through 16 chapters
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It's the magnum opus of the New Testament. It is
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the book where all Christian foundations of doctrine
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was mary mentioned not once how many times did we hear of praying to dead saints never
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how many times did we learn about purgatory or indulgences not once
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i i always find it extremely odd that roman catholics would make mary the center of their
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worship service when after the narrative of the Gospels, and I say narrative, of the Gospels
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and the first chapter or first two chapters of the book of Acts, you never hear of Mary again
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in all of the rest of the New Testament. By emphasis alone, we should say, how can you make
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Mary this massive focus when she is this much of a focus in the scriptures? She falls to the
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backdrop. It's not that she's not important. She's incredibly important.
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But Peter doesn't talk about it. James doesn't talk about it.
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Paul doesn't talk about it. John and his epistles do not
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your tendency in the flesh is to become a legalist i promise you that it's mine too
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because legalism offers a system in which people can perform and compare and elevate themselves
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above others it creates the system that is really great for social media right you get to go hey
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watch me follow me i know the way it creates a thing that points inward instead of pointing
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they can't handle that everything is already done
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In other words, Paul is not just giving these instructions
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are just such a gullible and overran church.
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And I would say, I'm saying the same to you.
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I don't think that Kingsway is this church filled with divisive people and overly emotional women that don't have any self-control.
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I don't think that. I think actually our church is very healthy.
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I'm just going, hey, I have not one concern over anybody in this church.
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Kingsway, your obedience, you are a great church.
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Because I want you to be wise in what is good and innocent to what is evil.
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That is the reason that we look at this passage of Scripture.
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He concludes his warnings by saying in verse 20, he says,
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The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet.
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The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet.
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The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you, he says.
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First, I want you to notice that after all these warnings about division and enemies,
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that Paul immediately strengthens their confidence by reminding them that they serve the God of peace.
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okay you serve a god of peace that's a great thing this church serves a god of peace and it
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should be a place of peace it should not be a place of strife and division it should not
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be contentious it should be a place of peace second he gives them an optimistic prophecy
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now there's a little bit more prophecy going on here
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well at that time Rome was under intense persecution
00:44:34.380
Think about this, you're a Roman Christian in the first century, and it's bad.
00:44:46.380
Every reason to believe that it's just going to get worse.
00:45:17.420
In Daniel 2, God revealed to Daniel Nebuchadnezzar's dream.
00:45:24.520
And it was successive world empires that were built on it.
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You can go back and read it and read all the commentaries.
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Everybody agrees with this structure that I'm about to say.
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more commentaries that I could bring up which I don't have
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obviously was christ that mountain is the kingdom of god he inaugurated during the reign of rome
00:46:38.700
and though the roman empire initially sought to crush the church the church crushes the empire
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it's an amazing thing that soon the god of peace is going to crush satan under your feet
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that would be difficult to believe when you're watching your friends die
00:47:05.120
because they won't drop some salt to the emperor
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and they turn back to this passage of scripture
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that says, soon, the God of peace will crush Satan under your feet.
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He says, Timothy, my fellow worker, greets you,
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so do Lucius and Jason and Sassapater and my kinsmen.
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I, Turchis, who is an amazing guy that we never hear about,
00:48:27.320
Confront your offenses or your offender or overlook them.
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I'm just going to overlook it, the bigger person.
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So if you can't actually overlook it, then you go confront it.
00:49:57.520
you can still have a frustration with the church
00:51:35.200
Father, we thank you. Lord, we ask for your blessing. We ask for the work that you do in us
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and through us to be unifying. Lord, we ask that you'd protect us from divisive people and from
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false teachers. Lord, that you would give us humble men and women. Lord, that we would be able to have
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the love that allows a culture to confront one another when we have offenses and issues.
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Lord that you would cultivate that here that we might be blessed