Today in 2 Peter. We're talking about discernment, in particular, discerning false teachers and false teaching. And in fact, this will be the theme of the, it is the theme of the entire chapter of second Peter chapter two. But there also is, it's a, the theme of the book, a big theme of the whole book is discerning false teachers and false doctrine.

So, over the next. Three weeks. We'll be in chapter two for this sermon and the two following. And discernment will just be a canopy sort of banner theme over these three messages, and we'll hit it from some different angles. But the drumbeat is basically we need to discern false teachers and false teaching.

But I want to expand it also in just to talk about discernment in general, and that's a very important topic in the world right now, is just for us to be seeing accurately, seeing as God sees, seeing God sees perfectly. God has perfect discernment, right? So, we want to be able to see accurately as God sees.

And what that entails essentially is How we perceive what's true or false and what's real and what's an illusion. Cause a lot of times deceptions are built upon a lie. Alex, I believe spoke about this last week. Deceptions are built upon a lie. And so, anybody who lacks discernment, they will be more easily deceived because they'll hear the true part and then they'll believe the whole thing.

They'll believe the live part as well. And so that's a, we can be naive if we're not discerning. And. In previous times, there was, we were a high trust society as America and a high trust society means that you could generally trust what people would say. Not always, but there was a general respect for truth, a general trust that we could hold for, give to one another, and that's no longer the case.

And that, and sadly, even in the church, that's not the case. So, we have to be more discerning about the messages that we hear and discern them with a little more effort. So, deception is in the world, and we need it now as much as ever because of what's at stake. Eternity itself is at stake.

So, what we're going to do today is we're going to look at false teachers and false teaching. And we'll have three messages on this general topic. And today we'll look at the text and look specifically at just false teachers and false teaching. So, let's dig in. We're in Second Peter chapter two, Second Peter chapter two.

And we are going to cover three verses today. So, three verses. Let's listen to God's word.

But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the master who bought them, bringing upon themselves swift destruction. And many will follow their sensuality. And because of them, the way of truth will be blasphemed and, in their greed, they will exploit you with false words.

Their condemnation from long ago is not idle and their destruction is not asleep. This is God's word. First big point. We need to discern false teachers. We need to discern false teachers. So, he says here in verse one there will be false teachers among you. Let's start here. No Bible teacher is perfect, right?

I know this. I know this for a fact, because I'm a Bible teacher and I know that I am far from perfect. So, every, everybody who teaches the Bible, they're going to get some things wrong. And that's why the Bible tells us in James chapter three we should not many people should be Bible teachers.

There is a particular weightiness to that responsibility. So, let's just look at James chapter three verses one and two. And James says, not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness. For we all stumble in many ways.

And if anyone does not stumble in what he says, he's a perfect man able to bridle his own, his whole body. Now he's the word perfect there does not mean without any fault whatsoever. He's talking about somebody who is complete, but the verse prior he's talking about those who teach will be judged with greater strictness.

And I think that could fairly apply both. There is a stricter judgment from the Lord. And there's also a stricter judgment from fellow men and women who will evaluate what they say, because they're, they're giving instruction and what the instruction that they give their own lives will be evaluated according to the instruction they give.

So, the point here is that teaching and preaching is serious business because God intends his people to receive it as a word from God. And I hear this all the time from people here. When I hear feedback from you, I hear people say, the Lord spoke to me today when you said this or that, and here's what I took away from it.

And that is humbling, and it is wonderful and encouraging and sobering because I know that when anything that I teach that could be in error, any error taught from the pulpit amplifies the error because it gives it divine force. So, pulpit ministry and teaching is a very weighty, important thing. So, whenever we need to discern false teachers, I want to make a distinguishing, a distinction.

There we go. I want to make a distinction between a teaching that is false and a false teacher, because those aren't the same thing. Teaching something that's false doesn't necessarily make someone a false teacher. False teachers, and we'll see this in the text as we as we go through it here. A false teacher is a wolf in sheep's clothing, at least in this context here, he's referring to teachers who are not converted.

They are unregenerate wolves, but they occupy a position of authority within a church. Verse one here, it says, False prophets also arose among the people. So, he's speaking of the Old Testament times, just as there will be false teachers among you. So, this among you means that within your own local church context, there's always the potential that a false teacher could arise within our own church, just as they did back in the Old Testament times with false prophets.

And these false teachers secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the master who bought them. So, these are, these people deny Christ. They're not Christians. And so, any Bible teacher can say something that is incorrect and be in error, but that does not mean that they're a false teacher. So, these people here, they're not true converts.

They make an outward profession of faith, and they presume to be a teacher or a leader, but they don't have the inner change of heart. It says here that they deny the master. They deny the master. So, they deny Jesus's moral authority over them. Now, the fact that they're in a church and they're teaching means that they're going to give some sort of acknowledgment of Jesus or Christianity.

That's, if he didn't do that, then nobody would listen to them at all. But the teaching itself, the content of their teaching ends up denying Christ. And that is by denying Jesus's moral authority over them. They end up contradicting Jesus's message while claiming to represent Jesus himself. Now there's a curious phrase here, denying the master who bought them.

Scholars have debated what this means because clearly, from the context, these people are unregenerate. So, what does it mean that he bought them? And the, there's a couple of different ways that they resolve it, but likely it means something like Jesus died for the sake of his people. So, in that sense, Jesus died for those, he bought them.

But this, but these false teachers are not included among that group. So, he's generally he bought the people of God that these false teachers are teaching, even though the teachers themselves are unregenerate. But the point is not that these teachers are Christians. They are clearly not Christians.

Verse three makes it even more plain that they were condemned. So, their condemnation from long ago is not idle and their destruction is not asleep. Okay. So, from these verses, there's three things we can learn about false teachers. Number one, they teach destructive heresies. So, they teach destructive heresies, a destructive heresy.

It's not just something that's inaccurate, but it is something that is spiritually harmful. We'll get into this more in just a minute, but that's the first thing we can learn about them. The second thing is that they're not obvious. That's where discernment comes in. And that's why we'll spend three weeks generally looking at discernment.

They're not obvious. It says here that they operate in secret.

They operate secretly, so they secretly bring in, so that's, that means that they're not announcing. If it would be ridiculous for them to announce the fact that they're a false teacher. They do it in secret. So, what that means is that you may not be able to tell that they're a false teacher, at least not at first glance.

Now, the book of Jude is a parallel to the book of 2 Peter, and in fact, they're very obviously related. There's a lot of the same language, the same structure, so Jude and 2 Peter are very closely related, and so there's some insights in what the book of Jude says. In the book of Jude, it says certain people have crept in unnoticed.

Speaking of false teachers. So, you think of somebody who creeps in, they're being sneaky, they're being sly and subversive, and they sneak in unnoticed, meaning that nobody even saw them coming. Nobody even was paying attention. That's why we need to discern them. False teachers very likely will be people that you like.

And that's what makes it so challenging because you like them and because we're social creatures. If you like somebody, you're inclined to trust them. You're inclined to believe them. False teachers will be people you like, and you will be inclined to believe them. So, they're going to be people that could be charming.

They're going to be popular. They're going to be friendly. And that's it. A lot of the prominent false teachers that we could name are people that have exactly those characteristics. They're people that they just have a charisma. You just like them. Naturally you like them. The third thing that we notice is that they have hidden motives.

They have hidden motives. Faithful shepherds, their motive is to do what Jesus told them to do, what Jesus told Peter to do, which is feed my sheep. That's what faithful shepherds do. They want to do what's best for the sheep. False teachers don't do that. False teachers don't do what's best for God's people.

Rather, they exploit God's people for their own benefit. False teachers have some hidden motive. Something is going on that is driving them to what they do, and that's not what is best for God's people. The book of Jude chapter, or verse 12, it says, false shepherds feed themselves. Shepherds feeding themselves.

Is what it says there. So, these are false teachers who starve God's sheep of truth that they need to grow and thrive, but they're depriving God's people of the truth that they need and they're feeding themselves by exploiting them. And that's in their greed. It says he does that. So, there's a financial gain they get from it.

So, they don't teach because they love God and because they love God's people, they're in it for what they can get out of it. So that's the false teachers. Now, let's look at the false teaching because we need to discern the false teacher and we need to discern the teaching itself, the things that they say.

Verse one, back here again, it says that they teach destructive heresies. So, let's talk about that a little bit more. What are heresies? Christians are not consistent in the use of this word. There, there's probably people in this room, and we might use this word differently. Some people would use the word heresy to refer to anything that is not true.

Any Christian teaching that is not true. Other people, and I would include myself in this camp, would use the word heresy to refer to a particularly destructive teaching that undermines the gospel itself that undermines salvation. So at least for our purposes here, and I, and this is the way that you see the word used most often in scripture.

Heresy does not refer to any doctrine that happens to be false, no matter how great or small. That's not what heresy is. Heresy does refer to significant doctrinal errors that undermine. Essential teaching of the Christian faith. I'll give you an example of this. We're a Baptist church. Christ the King is a Baptist church.

That means our practice as a church is what you would call credo baptism, which is believers’ baptism. So, we don't baptize infants. We baptize people who make a visible known profession of faith. Many of our close friends as a church, in fact, many of the speakers at our conference coming maybe most of them they are pedobaptist.

Meaning, they have a different view of baptism than what is practiced here. So, they have, they practice infant baptism and there's, there are, they have their own reasons for doing that. We can't both be right. So, somebody is wrong, right? Now we wouldn't say that whoever is on the other side is a heretic. I don't say pedobaptism, people who believe in pedobaptism, I don't say they're heretics and I don't call that doctrine heresy.

I don't agree with it, I'm not persuaded of it, but I find it respectable and defensible biblically and I can understand how they arrived at that conclusion even though I'm not personally persuaded that it is accurate. So, it's not a heresy, those kind of doctrinal disputes. So, we would put that, in a theological triage.

How important is it? That is a difference that is not as important as, the deity of Christ or something of that level of significance. If somebody, let's say somebody denies that we are saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone, that person is a heretic because that person is undermining an essential truth of the Christian gospel.

And so, anybody that says that very categorically, they are a false teacher. They are a heretic. They would need to repent and believe the true gospel. And that's how they can, that's how they can be saved. But we have to be able to make some distinctions. Not only between different doctrines, between truth and error, but also the weight of that error.

So, any teaching that would plunge people into spiritual ruin is a heresy. Those are the sorts of teachings that cause factions and they're harmful to the church. So, heresies are plausible enough to be believed, but they ultimately lead people to spiritual ruin. Now, there are lots of false teachings that have arisen in the past throughout church history, throughout, in our day now, there's all kinds of different sorts of heresies and false teachings that we could evaluate.

There are two here in this text that are particularly relevant for us now, because they happen to be two very prominent heresies that are, or at least Two practices of false teachers, maybe a better way to put it, two practices of false teachers that happened in Peter’s Day and he was addressing and they're still happening now.

Verse two says this, many will follow their sensuality. So, there are two issues here. Sex and greed. Many will follow their sensuality. Sensuality is a reference to sexual immorality, sexual sin. And then, in their greed, they will exploit you. Greed is money. Sex and money. And they're combined here in this particular error.

There will always be people who pay money to have religious leaders affirm sexual immorality. There's always a market demand and there will always be false teachers who will rise up to meet the market demand and get paid to teach false doctrine about sex. Why is this important? It's because God created sex for our good and for his glory and it is a gift that is so good and powerful that he protected it with a covenant.

He protected it with the covenant of marriage. And this wicked world wants unrestricted erotic gratification, and they hate God for interfering with that desire. The scripture condemns it. The scripture tells us sex is good and beautiful within these parameters and sex is sinful and immoral and God will judge it outside of those parameters.

And given the wickedness of our world and the intensity of people's sexual desire, they will pay people to dress up in religious garments and to stand up in beautiful churches and cathedrals and lie about God. They will pay people to tell them, God wants you to enjoy sex as much as you want, when you want, how you want, with whomever you want.

They will pay people to tell them God won't condemn anyone for who they love. God wants you to be happy all the time. There's all kinds of people that speak this way. Some of them are pastors in churches with a job, and some of them are tick talk influencers, and they're making reels, they're writing blog posts, they're on social media, and that's a destructive heresy.

That is a false teaching that undermines the truth of the gospel. People know deep down that it is wrong and immoral. That Romans, chapter one teaches this, that there is something innate within us because God has, he's hardwired our consciences to know innately what is good and natural about sexuality.

And so, there is an innate sense of what is immoral and unnatural. So that is built in, that's hardwired. But Romans 1 says, we suppress the truth in unrighteousness. So, somebody's conscience might be troubled by what they innately know to be true, and they suppress that truth and unrighteousness. And that's why there's always a market demand for somebody to come along and give moral force to give a sense of divine authority to excuse the very sin that they're most eager to indulge.

They'll pay for it. They'll give them jobs. They'll dress them up in pretty robes. They'll put them in front of beautiful churches. They will do it with all kinds of pomp and high liturgy in order to give maximal credibility to the very wickedness that they are most eager to commit. That's what Peter's talking about here.

He says there is a sin of sensuality. Many will follow their sensuality. So, the teachers very often engage in these sins themselves. And people follow them into their sensuality. And because of them the way of truth will be blasphemed. And in their greed, they will exploit you with false words. Exploit means I want to take your money; you're going to pay me to lie to you.

It's greed and it's sexual immorality mixed together, dressed up in a church. That is a very destructive error, a very destructive lie. And what he says here in verse 2 is that because of them, the way of truth will be blasphemed. That's strong language. The way of truth will be blasphemed. What does that mean?

The Bible, the New Testament speaks often of the Christian life or the Christian faith as the way. So, in the book of Acts, in the earlier chapters, the way was the way they described Christianity. And so, the way or the way of Christ is a synonym for just the Christian life, for what we believe for Christianity itself.

Now later in the book of Acts, it is they start calling them Christians. But the way is what was in the early church known. That was the way they described their faith. And so, the way of truth is blasphemed. So, the way is the gospel. This is the truth, the core truth of what we believe.

And it is access to God himself through faith in Jesus Christ. The way is how we can be saved. The way is how we can know God, the way we can have eternal life. False teachers teach these wicked things. And so, they blaspheme the way. In so doing, they're sending people to hell. They're hurting people.

They're destroying people. They're destroying people that would have possibly known God, you would imagine. But they're putting up roadblocks and obstacles that make it more difficult to see who God is because they're, you might have some teachers that are telling the truth.

And you have other teachers that are telling the lie and both of them claiming to represent Jesus. And so, Peter is writing this letter, and you see it in Paul, you see it all over the New Testament. They're saying like, we have to discern the errors from the truth, and we have to correct the error. We have to correct the false teachers or rebuke them or discipline them out of the church.

And we have to correct the false teaching itself. Because if we don't, the way of the truth is blasphemed, meaning people go to hell if we don't do this. It's, it is of utter importance. Now I'll tell you, whenever I was younger, a lot of preachers that would speak about these things, I dismissed them and I shouldn't have, I dismissed them because I was like, come on, man, which are all worked up about, that's not going on here.

Why are you making such a big deal about things? And I, as it turns out, they were prescient. They saw things coming. They saw things that I didn't see. They saw the need to correct sin, to correct error, false teachers, and false doctrine. And this is why it is such an urgent issue. It is an urgent issue, not merely because Christians just love to beat up on sexual immorality.

We just love to just meddle around and nose around in people's bedrooms and tell them who you can sleep with and who not to sleep with. We're just power hungry. That's what we want. You probably vote for Donald Trump too. They're just power hungry, crazy conservative people. No, that's ridiculous.

That's not what we think. We think there is a truth that is Jesus. The way, the truth, and the life. That is how we get to know. That's how we get to know God and how we gain access to God, how our sins can be forgiven and how we can have eternal life. And without that, apart from that, we go to hell. People don't know God.

It hurts people. And if we don't correct the error, then the truth is obscured, and the error gets to just have. Have its day deceiving people.

Romans chapter two, verse 24 says something similar. As it is written, the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you. This is something that has been of issue in the last couple of years in the Southern Baptist Convention. So, the, there was at the annual convention, I believe it was a year or two, maybe two years ago that one of the speakers from the platform made some comment about, you, we don't want to get involved in these culture war kind of things because the world is watching.

You might've heard this. The world is watching. That was the tagline that. that reverberated a lot throughout that meeting. And then in a sense, it reflects a common sentiment with a lot of Christians. Which is we want to be a witness to the world. We want people to know Jesus. We want them to hear the truth of the gospel and to get saved.

But if we're distracted by culture warring against sexual immorality, then we obscure the truth and the goodness of Jesus Christ, which should be our main focus. That is very foolish because in fact, the world is watching. What do they see? If they see this error proliferate, then it obscures the truth that we're trying to proclaim.

So right now, the gospel is blasphemed all across our society by false teachers. It's happening all around us. And false teachers present themselves as God's teachers. They appoint themselves as God's representatives. And people that don't know Jesus don't know the difference. They just, somebody says they're a Bible man, Bible teacher, whatever.

I, they, I guess so they don't know the difference. And so, unbelievers know innately that sexual immorality is wrong. Their conscience is hardwired with this knowledge by the spirit. And so that means that God has made this truth known to them. They know deep down in places maybe they're not even conscious of deep down.

They know that there is a good, true expression of sexuality, and there's a lot of deviations and immoral expressions of it. And then whenever they see Christians affirming it, accepting it, celebrating it, and they think that represents Christianity. Now there's a tension between what they know in their heart that God put there and what they hear Christians saying.

So, what might they conclude? The thing that I know is wrong, these Christians over here are saying it's okay and it's right. Now, I'm already having this stuff crammed down my throat by the DEI HR department at work. Why do I need Christians to give license to that and to affirm it? And so, they hear Christians, they know it's a lie.

It discredits the truth of the gospel by Christians who are unwilling to speak truth about it. Fred has written, the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you. If we don't speak truth, if we don't speak plainly, the difficult thing that much in the world are celebrating, then we miss opportunities to preach the gospel to those who are waking up to the reality that, hey, maybe the wool has been pulled over our eyes and maybe this sexual madness in our culture is not a good thing.

I believe one of the most evangelistic things we can do. is to boldly stand against the sexual insanity of the world. It's one of the most evangelistic things you can do. It is loving. It is kind. It is a merciful because believe me, I don't, I don't say this with pride. I say this just to just tell you, I've seen this coming.

I, years ago I remember predicting to someone in this church years ago, and I'm like, okay. Pedophilia, it's coming. This is, I don't know, seven or eight years ago. And somebody later came to me and said, I thought you were nuts when you said it. But now I see, now it's that there, there's some truth there.

And folks like the slippery slope is undefeated, like where things are now are not, it's not as though, okay, the insanity will just be at this level forever. It's no, it, the insanity has a direction to it. And so, there's a lot of things we don't have control over, but what we do have control over is our witness, our testimony.

And at the very least, within the church, we need to, what is, speak what is true. We need to correct errors, correct lies, and these lies are so pervasive that we have to correct them repeatedly. Believe me, this isn't the most enjoyable or exciting thing to talk about. There's lots of things. I'd love to talk about anxiety and trusting God with your finances.

That would be fun. But instead, we have to constantly focus on the things that the Bible focuses on. This is all over the New Testament, these sort of things. I saw a video clip yesterday. There was a pastor, and from what I could tell, it looked like they were doing a series called What If?

What if series? And I was like, I couldn't believe my ears. The pastor, and this was like highly produced video, and the pastor said something like, what if God. worships us. And I was like, what are you crazy? And he's no, listen, what if God worships us? And he goes on and on talking about how God loves us that much.

God cares about us that much. God wants you to be his that much that God worships us. And then after that, it cuts to the worship leader. And so now you've got, the band up on the stage and they've got the pretty music playing and they're just closing their eyes and they're swaying. And I wrote it down.

That's where this is what he said. The worship leader comes up and he's praying, and he says, God, we declare that you are a God that worships us. And when he said that in a prayer, like that is blasphemy. That is blasphemy. That's not, I'm not saying that with hyperbole. I'm not exaggerating. That is straight up the middle blasphemy.

It is speaking a lie about God. Now get this speaking a lie about God wearing all the trappings of what people expect from a church. You've got a video, you've got a preacher, you've got a music, you've got a prayer, you got the pretty music playing. You got the people that are swaying and they're just like, they're feeling it, they're loving this.

They're thinking, man, this is so good. God worships me. Yes, thank you, God. You worship me well, speaking blasphemy. And how could some, how could this preacher and this worship leader get away with that? I would stand up and walk out if I didn't get violent first., I'm just like. This is insane.

How could you teach that? But I'm, I just thought about this. Like, how could he get away with this? And the answer is he gets away with it because he's got a church full of naive sheep that have not been taught. They don't know the truth from error. Maybe they're unconverted and he is, they are paying him to lie to them about their sin.

It's heartbreaking. Now, we're going to have three sermons on this in 2 Peter, so I'll, we'll talk about false teachers, false teachings, so I want to read one text, and we'll develop this further in the coming weeks, but this one text, I just want to show you what the skill of discernment looks like, and we'll unpack it more in the coming weeks.

So, here's Hebrews chapter five, talking about growing in discernment. So as the, about this, we have much to say, and it is hard to explain since you have become dull of hearing. So, he's speaking to people that are not as discerning, at least they're if discernment it's about maybe some degree of blindness to what's real.

This is similar deafness to what is real, but you've become dull of hearing, and he says, for though by this time you ought to be teachers. You need someone to teach you again, the basics. You need someone to teach you again, the basic principles of the oracles of God. So, the fundamentals of Christianity, you need to know the fundamentals and be fortified in those things.

You need milk, not solid food for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness since he is a child. So, a lack of discernment is naivete and it is also, but it's something you can grow in. It's just, it's like being a child. You, somebody who was an infant in Christ, they can grow, you can improve, you can get better and grow in your discernment.

But we all start somewhere, and we start on the milk and then we move up to the meat. So, you need milk, not solid food. For everybody who just, if you just live forever on milk, then you're unskilled in the word, you're not going to be discerning, you're not going to be able to understand enough doctrine to distinguish truth from error, right?

Solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil. So, someone who is discerning there's a few things that come together. One is there is a, there's time for them to grow. So, this is a skill that is practiced over time, and it is something that comes as a result of spiritual maturity.

You're growing in Christ. So, you have some experience, you've been trained, and you're trained in how to look, how to distinguish, how to discern good from evil, right? And then it is trained through practice and through knowledge of God's word. So, you understand what does God's word say, what are some basic categories of thought that are biblical and right?

And then how does that line up with what I hear, what I see, what I observe in the world? And then through practice, I can get training. I can develop and grow in this skill of discernment. I can see things. I can see error more quickly. I can detect something off about someone else more quickly, and we need practice because it's, we're going to be off.

Sometimes we could be off a lot of times we can think something is right. But in, and be confident in it, but end up being wrong because we didn't have the right information, or we didn't interpret the situation correctly. So, it's something that can grow and it need, we need to grow. And like I said, whenever we started because of the world we live in now where lies have become so pervasive, we're no longer a high trust kind of society.

And that applies to the church. We can't, anybody who just says, I'm a Christian, I'm a Christian teacher, listen to what I say. That doesn't mean we can trust them. Had somebody asking me this week for resources about a particular issue that we're studying. And there, and I had to like, okay, who can I trust that to set what kind of resources can I send?

Because there's a lot of resources that might be good on this topic, but not on other topics. And so, I had to, you take a while to really exercise some discretion about what resources would I recommend on that subject. And that's, that is discernment. And that is a skill that we have to exercise more now, I think.

I it's always good, but I think it is more vital now because we can no longer rely on what we hear from other people. So, it's like the gift or the need to develop a wisdom is. Is more urgent now because there's not a lot of wisdom to just look to and see in other people. So, it's a muscle that we need to exercise.

This is the unfortunate reality. We're not a high trust society. There's A proverb, I heard this proverb and I, whenever I thought of it this week to include here, I thought Ronald Reagan said it, but it turns out I think he was citing a Russian proverb, but the proverb is trust, but verify. And evidently in Russian, like the trust and verify those words rhyme, but in English it doesn't.

But anyway, trust, but verify. So, it's not like we never can trust, but it does mean that we have to exercise the muscle of verify more often. do less trusting and more verifying, especially with Christian teachers and doctrine. And just one last thought here. This is why the local church is all the more important.

I think I would just recommend to people generally, if you have a question about something doctrinal, just don't Google it. If you Google it, you never know what you're going to end up with. There may be a few websites that are trustworthy and reliable, if you know the elders and the trustworthy people here that you can look to that you can ask questions of start there.

And they can recommend resources to you. And that's a thing we're happy to do and excited to do, would love to do. So, it's rather than googling it or just seeing what's on YouTube and just trusting what you see there, it is all the more important, I think now to talk to people, within a local church body where there's accountability.

Okay, we'll develop these things more in the next couple of weeks, but we'll, let's close up in prayer. Now, our father, we thank you that you have given us the way of truth through Jesus Christ and that you have revealed to us how we can know God, how we can have our sins forgiven, how we can be cleansed and made whole and how we can have renewal in life through faith in Jesus and Lord.

There are false teachings and false teachers in the world. And we need to discern them. And Lord, if we were to take Peter's words here and Paul's words in Acts chapter 20, seriously, that means we should prepare that these things may very well arise in our church and may, it may, somebody may be here now.

And Lord, we need to be vigilant. And that means we need skill, maturity. We need to know your word. We need to be cautious and watchful without being paranoid. And even in those things and how we approach it, Lord, we need your spirit to lead us and show us, how do we do this? And that's what we ask now, Lord, show us how we can be discerning and wise.

And we thank you God that you see all things perfectly. Your discernment is totally accurate in every possible way. And so, help us to see with your eyes and by your spirit give us eyes to see the truth and reality and to apply it as needed in our lives. Thank you, Jesus, also for the spirit within us that leads us into truth through faith in Christ.

You've given us your spirit. Thank you for that gift. Let me ask you all these things in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.