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As we get started this morning, I want to give you a pop quiz. You guys ready for the pop quiz? We got some students in the room. You guys uh you get you just your palms started getting sweaty, right? Immediately. Heart started racing a little bit. A little pop quiz for you. Let me ask you a question. Uh just a few questions here, and I want you to tell me if these statements are true or false. Okay? If these are true or false statements that I'm gonna give you, right? Here's the first one. God helps those who help themselves. True or false?

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False.

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False. Okay. Alright, that's cool. All right, alright. I'm not gonna give you the answers right now, okay? I'm just gonna say, okay, false. That's what I heard, general false. Anybody say true? Okay? Anybody brave? Okay, true, all right. Uh, how about this? Cleanliness is next to godliness. Now, my mom would say this is true. It's direct from the pages of scripture. Okay? That's what she would tell me, okay? Um, I so I I've wrestled through this one. I don't know. I'm trying to figure that one out. No. Uh how about this one? If you follow God, you will have everything that you want. Y'all are fast on that one. Wow. God, man, you must be a bad God, man. No, um, okay, interesting, interesting perspective. Uh, if you work hard to be a good Christian, God will love you more. Okay, that's pretty fast. Wow, wow, impressive. Now, here's the thing. All of these scriptures have an element of truth to them. All these statements, not scriptures, but these that you could actually go and find a scripture that might support some of what you see here. Okay? And here's the thing: um, you can use the Bible to lead people astray. You can actually use the scripture in an inappropriate way to help people believe lies about themselves, about life, about the reality of what we are doing here today. You can actually use scripture. In fact, I'm not going to do this, but I could I could make a pretty good sermon. I could put a pretty good sermon together. It would make a case for something that wasn't true, and a lot of you guys would probably buy it. I'm not trying to be offensive, I'm not trying to like tell you that you're dumb. I'm just saying, like, a lot of us put a ton of stock in those who lead to the degree that literally, if somebody gets up and they have a platform to speak from, or they're speaking and they're saying they're coming from the Bible, or they're saying they're coming from a church, that we immediately say, Oh, uh, they must be speaking truth, and we just absorb it. We just accept it for truth. And I'm just gonna go ahead and tell you this morning that everything that comes out of my mouth ought to be filtered through the word of God. And so I want you to know that you shouldn't just believe it because I say it. Now, most of the time, pastors get up and they try to make a case for why you should listen to them. I'm gonna make a case for why you should listen to me, but also why you should also check me, why you should also make sure that what I'm saying is actually true. Because as the church, we are not called to just take one teacher's word for everything and just follow it. Except Jesus, who was the great teacher, right? And we look at his word and we look, we do that. Here's the thing we've been working through the book of 1 John, and as we've been working through the book of 1 John, our desire is to live more and more like Jesus, to live increasingly like him. He is our example, he is our model, he's who we are shooting for, okay? So we want to be mature in the ways that Jesus was mature. We want to be loving in the way that Jesus was loving. We want to be grace-filled in the way that Jesus was grace-filled. We want to be truth-filled in the way that Jesus was truth-filled. We want to follow Jesus, okay? That's our goal. He is our target, he's our model, he's what we're shooting for. And in order to do that, we need to know who he is and what he has done, and we need to receive the message about him into our lives, and we need to live that message out, okay? And the truth of the matter is that there is a war going on for the souls of mankind. A war, a battle. It's going on for the souls of mankind. And one of the primary ways we talked about last week that we get sidetracked in this war, we kind of get taken out, is that we have this desire in us that was given to us by God, but that the enemy uses against us, and we start to love things of the world and we start to elevate the temporary things over God. So we take things that are good things, even like family, our our spouses, our children, or work, which is actually a good thing. I know some of you are like, work's not a good thing. Um, work's a good thing, is actually given in the Bible pre-the fall. So before the before sin entered the world, there was already a job to do. That's cool, huh? And so we will take things that are good things and we'll make them into God things. And we'll start to worship those things. Very, very dangerous, right? And we said last week that John, in the passage in 1 John 2.15, he said that the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life, that kind of those overarching ideas, those things will suck us in and we will get to a place where we're worshiping idols in our hearts. And we're giving ourselves over to things that are temporary. And we make the temporary, the way of thinking that says that what's here and now is all that there is, that it's ultimate. We'll make that our operating system for life. And guess what? That leads us down to a path of destruction. Down a path of destruction. And so we said, let's don't do that. Let's love Jesus, let's love God, and the one who remains in his word will live forever. That it won't be just a temporary satisfaction that's here, that's gone, but a satisfaction that will increasingly grow as we get to experience one day his return and to be with him forever, and the ultimate joy, the ultimate satisfaction, the ultimate restoration of all things. And I'm looking forward to that day. Are you? I'm looking forward to that day. But there's not only the issue of our own desires. In fact, the James in scripture, I won't make you turn there, but it says this it says that when we are in sin, that first our flesh leads us away. Is my mic? No, no. My buttons open. Am I showing chests? Are y'all getting some chest flashes out there? Oh, okay. I'm getting like the so sorry, sorry, I didn't mean to like make anybody nervous this morning. I'm sorry. Um that was just button one. All right. Throughout the sermon, it was gonna progress, sorry. Um back into flow here. So here's the thing. I don't even know where I am now. Holy Spirit, come. James says to us that our flesh leads us astray. It leads us astray, it leads us into sin because we want things that God says, those things, if you get those things, they're gonna kill you. But we still have these evil desires. But he also says that there is temptation that comes into our life that comes from the evil one, the enemy. He tries to tempt us, he tries to lure us away from God, he tries to lure us away from the truth that we stand on in the gospel. And so in this passage, we want to look at the fact that there are not only issues with our flesh that want to cause us to desire things that are not ultimate and make those things ultimate, but also there's a sense in us that we can get distracted and we can get deceived into believing uh false gospels. And I'll explain what I mean. But if you have your Bible, why don't you go ahead and open up to 1 John chapter 2? The next section we're in is 1 John chapter 2, verse 18. If you don't have a Bible, there's some Bibles under the chairs, and if you need a Bible, if you don't own a Bible, feel free to take one as a gift from us. 1 John chapter 2, verse 18. It says this children, it is the last hour. And as you have heard, Antichrist is coming. Even now, many Antichrists have come. We know from this that it is the last hour. They went out from us, but they did not belong to us, for if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us. However, they went out so that it might be made clear that none of them belong to us. But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and all of all of you have knowledge. I have not written to you because you don't know the truth, but because you do know it, and because no lie comes from the truth. Who is the liar if not the one who denies that Jesus is the Messiah? This one is the Antichrist, the one who denies the Father and the Son. No one who denies the Son can have the Father. He who confesses the Son has the Father as well. What you have heard from the beginning must remain in you. And if you if what you have heard from the beginning remains in you, then you will remain in the Son and in the Father. And this is the promise that He Himself made to us eternal life. Is that a great verse? I have written these things to you about those who are trying to deceive you. The anointing you receive from him remains in you, and you don't need anyone to teach you. Instead, his anointing teaches you about all things, and is true and is not a lie, just as he has taught you, remain in him. So in this passage, John tells us, he's writing to the people that are in these churches around the city of Ephesus. He's writing this letter and he says, You are in the last hour. You are in the final days, you're in the last days. So we hear it different ways in Scripture, but the bottom line is what is John trying to tell them? He's trying to say that the end has begun. The end is near. It's nearer than we think it is. Now, um, I don't know about you, but over the course of my life, even in my uh 30-something years of life, uh, I know that I've heard numerous times along the way people make claims like Jesus is getting ready to come back. It can't get any worse than this. Oh, it's so bad. Jesus is definitely coming back this year. Or he's coming back really, really soon because it just can't get worse. Listen, I want you to know that's not a new thought. Every generation that's come before us has had that thought. We live in the last hour. Well, what does that mean? It means this. It means that from the time first that Christ first came, when he first showed up on the scene as a little baby in a manger, to the time that he returns again, that period we call the final days, the last hour. And it's imminent according to scripture. It is imminent. It's on us that at any point in time that could happen. And we live in those days. Now, the early church, when they when they thought about that, they thought about it in terms of literally Jesus was gonna come back in their lifetime. And so you know what they did? They did what anybody would do if you thought Jesus was gonna come back. They got insanely practical in just uh ridding themselves of all their stuff. They they literally sold all that they had and they gave it to the apostles and they said, Apostles, distribute this amongst whoever has need, because the truth is we don't need this stuff. This stuff isn't gonna last, and we definitely aren't gonna need it when Jesus returns. And so they sold their stuff. That's how serious they were, right? Not only that, but they also lived with reckless abandon and trying to get the message of Jesus to all the people around them. To the degree that many of them lost their life because they were proclaiming the message of Jesus in the face of a government that said, There is only one king, and his name is Caesar. There is only one Lord, there is only one God, he is Caesar. And so many of them were impaled, stuck on poles, and lit as torches to be cut to make a point that we don't declare any other person is God but Caesar. And they did that because they they these guys were so committed to getting the gospel message to all their friends, their neighbors, their family, people that were around them, with the mindset that at any point in time Jesus was going to return. Jesus was gonna return. Now, honestly, as I read that this week, I was just reminded again how we don't live with the same urgency that these people lived with. In fact, we kind of do the opposite in many ways. We are accumulating more and more stuff and more and more stuff and more and more stuff because we're like, you know, we might as well enjoy it, right? This is enjoy life and let's get as much stuff as we can. I'm not saying stuff's evil, but I'm telling you, when you start to, it tells us a lot about where we put our stock, depending on how much stuff we accumulate, because we put our hope in these temporary things that aren't going to last. But what I am telling you is this our tendency is complacency with the gospel. Our tendency is to be complacent with the gospel rather than to have an urgency to go and tell those around us. Harley mentioned that this week's national night out and that Halloween is coming. Great opportunities to meet our neighbors, but for what purpose? So we can have more friends? So we can have more acquaintances, so that our streets will be safer? I hope all that is true. But I also hope that we have the prayer and the desire that every person who lives on our block knows the person of Jesus. Because one day when Christ returns, we will no longer be able to proclaim that message any longer. One day we will not have the opportunity to open our mouths and to tell them the good news that Jesus came to die for them, to give them eternal life. We won't be able to proclaim that message. It'll be over, it'll be done. And many of us, myself included, can many times say, Well, somebody else can tell them. Somebody else can tell them. But the truth is that God put us on our block, on our street, in our workplace, in those settings that we're in to tell people about Jesus Christ. He put us there. And so we had that opportunity in these last days. But part of the last days, and he says, you know these are the last days because Antichrist is coming. Antichrist is coming. The first time he says it, Antichrist is capitalized. And the second time it says, many Antichrists have come. So in the scripture, we're actually told that there is an antichrist, the Antichrist, who's going to come. 2 Thessalonians chapter 2 tells us he's a man of lawlessness. He's going to come and he's going to try to get as many people to follow him in opposition to God. Okay? So there is a figure, and you see this in the book of Revelation. Again, we don't have a lot of time to unpack that today, but just know that the Bible talks about a man who will come and basically Satan incarnate with the intent being bent on leading us astray. Now I hear people say things like, well, this person's the Antichrist, or this person's the Antichrist. I mean, I've heard people saying our president's the Antichrist. People talk about this all the time. We don't know who this guy's going to be, but we know this. He's going to be a bad dude. And he's going to be bent on leading as many people as he can away from the person of Jesus. That's intense. But he says many Antichrists have already come. So what does Antichrist mean anyway? Well, simply put, it means against Christ. Antichrist means against Christ. And the spirit of that Antichrist, the Antichrist who will come, who will be evil incarnate, literally, that spirit is already in the world, and many people are antichrist. They're in opposition to Christ. There's really two primary ways that we see these antichrists, okay? First, we see them opposing the teaching of who Jesus is and what he is about, opposing the teaching, opposing uh the belief that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, who came, God, and made flesh, dwelt among us, died on a cross, was buried, was resurrected on the third day, and now he lives, and one day he will return for us. They oppose that message. They don't believe it. In fact, John, in this early, this is very early in the first century. Jesus had already obviously died and he'd resurrected and then he had ascended. The apostles were proclaiming this message about who he was, what they had seen, what they had heard, like John has already told us. And from very early on, even in the first century, there were there were teachers that had come up and they were teaching other things about Jesus. And that's part of the reason John is writing this letter. He's saying, don't be deceived, don't be deceived, don't be deceived. These Gnostics, these guys that think they have this special knowledge about God, and yet they do not walk in truth. They do not love their brother. So he's saying, you know, there's going to be these people who try to deceive you. There's going to be these people who try to get you sidetracked and to get you focused on other things besides Jesus. But don't buy it. Don't buy into it. And in our world today, there are people who try to sell you a message other than Jesus. Now, there's two primary ways that I see this working itself out. One is maybe considered more of a conservative way, and one's more of like a kind of a crazy out there kind of way. One way in the conservative way is moralism. Moralism. Did you know that when you say to people that you need to follow Jesus and behave for God to accept you, that you have now changed the gospel? So this is how it works out. We say things that sound good, but we say things like this trust in Jesus and go to church and then you can be a Christian. Or we say, trust in Jesus and read your Bible and pray, and then you can be a Christian. Trust in Jesus and this listen to this one. Go tell people about Jesus. Go tell other people about him, live on mission. Then you can be a Christian. Then you're really in the family. You know what the Bible says to that? It says, no. The Bible doesn't say that. The Bible says that all of our behavior is an overflow of our belief that Jesus is sufficient in and of himself. He doesn't need us to fix ourselves. He doesn't need us to do anything to get ourselves into heaven. We can't get ourselves into heaven. We can't work it out. All we can do is we can respond with humility and awe and wonder that He, being God, would reach down into our mess and pick us up and forgive us and give us life. And now everything is lived out of gratitude. And some of you in here this morning, you are living with the weight of the world on your shoulders saying, I gotta be a good person so God will accept me. And that is a lie from the pit of hell. You can't be a good enough person to get God to accept you. Some of us are also wearing that as a badge, like I've been a good person, so God He owes me this. God should let me into heaven because I've done these good things. I've gone to church all my life, I've prayed, I've read my Bible, I've told people about Jesus. I've kicked things off the stage. Listen. The only thing that saves is Jesus. And the Antichrist, they try to add to the message. They try to take away from the message, too. Do you know what the gospel also tells us? The gospel also tells us that we are sinful, broken messes. You can't start from a place of thinking that I've got it together and I can just add Jesus to my plate. That's the American gospel, by the way. Hey, your life's okay, but if you want it to be even better, add Jesus. You know, you've got all this stuff and you've got a good life and you've got a pretty family and you got these things. Just add Jesus and it'll all be better. It'll just kind of raise your level of goodness. That's not how it works. Because you know where the gospel starts? It starts with God and his holiness. It starts with God, not with us. And it says to us that God is holy, and because he is holy and righteous, he cannot accept us as sinful, fallen creatures. Because we rebelled, and we can blame Adam and Eve all day long, but we rebel, don't we? We have broken, messed up hearts. Our lives, they're filthy rags. Even our best attempts to be good are filthy rags, is what the scripture tells us. But here's the beautiful thing. When we start there, we understand just how awesome God's grace is. That He would save us in spite of all that. And here's the thing: some people say things like, you know, you're good. Discover who you are. And if you discover who you are, you will be a good person. And if you would just lean into who you are, if you'll just listen to your heart, if you'll just be this better person, this better version of you, man, life will be great. Can I just tell you this morning that in and of ourselves we are a hopeless, helpless cause? It doesn't mean that we aren't beautiful creations. It doesn't mean that we aren't created in the image of God. It doesn't mean that we don't have worth or value. Everyone of you in here, all of us have worth and value because we were made in the image of an awesome creator. And at the same time, we are rebellious children. And we need to wake up to that reality. And these Gnostics, these people who were trying to deceive the church back then, the same teaching is prevailing today. They say things to you like, you're a good person. You can do it. Just live, you know, just try harder. And you know what? The truth is we can't. We can't on our own. There's people on TV, you hear it? And they make claims like, you know, God, He wants to, He wants to fill your pockets with money. He wants you to live in this big fancy house, and He wants you to have all this stuff. If you just follow Him, He'll give you that. Where is that in the Bible? You know what they do? They take Old Testament passages that God made promises to the people of Israel and they apply it to themselves. Are you hearing me? They take Old Testament passages in the Bible and they take those truths where God promises something to the people of Israel and they apply it to themselves, and they they make these claims like, if I follow Jesus, I'll prosper and everything will be all good. But here's the problem that leaves Jesus out of the equation. I mean, when Jesus came, what did his life look like? It says he didn't even have a place to lay his head. Now, am I anti-money? No, I hope God gives us a lot of money. Because then we can use it to help other people know Jesus. But here's what I'm telling you if you follow Jesus, that's not like a follow Jesus equals get rich. And there are people who believe that. Or follow Jesus and you'll have no problems. I actually think that many times we follow Jesus, but the problems intensify, especially when you engage in the battle. Because Satan gets he gets set on. Trying to take us out. Is this intense? Okay, just making sure. These antichrists, these messengers, they come, they tell you all kinds of stuff. Not only that, but they they also try to add to the message and they try to take away from the message by giving these new revelations that they have. Do you know that every cult that's going on in the world today, like it's the same pattern? Many times they'll take some other religious truth and they'll just kind of springboard off of it. In fact, some of the biggest cults in the world take the Bible, they start here, and then they take the message and they twist it. Notice in the passage we just read from 1 John 2, he says, They came out from among us. Isn't that interesting? They came out from among us. Meaning that they had been hearing the gospel, they'd been hearing about Jesus, they've been hearing the truth of God's word. But then they decided, you know, I think we'd like to add a little bit to it, or I'd like to mess with that a little bit. That's the spirit of the Antichrist. To change the truth, to change the message, to change what we believe about the person and work of Jesus. Don't buy it. Just a word of caution. We live in the information age, right? And so we've got technology constantly bombarding us. People have got their phones, they've got their computers, they got all these ways they get information. And the truth is that a lot of times people are listening to podcasts, they're going online to sermon websites, they're going to all this stuff, and some of that stuff is really, really good. But some of it is really, really bad. And here's what I want you to understand this morning. In the information age, where we have access to more knowledge than we've ever had, more books, more libraries, more bookstores, more access to all this information, you know what's not going on in the United States? The church is not growing, it's declining. It's actually the people who go to church and are committed to church and to the person of Jesus is actually shrinking and the numbers are shrinking. You know why? Because information alone is not going to save you. If it sounds good, it doesn't mean it's true. If somebody's a very good communicator, it doesn't mean what they're saying is true. If they have a big platform and they drive a nice car and fancy clothes, it doesn't mean that they are actually talking to you with truth. Are you with me? Like, I as a pastor of this church, I want to protect the flock from these dumb conversations that are going on about stuff that is not true. Do not buy the lie. Do not buy it. Don't send your money in and support these guys, these clowns. Don't do it. I've wrestled with this this week because I've had conversations with people and they are hook, line, and sinker buying into ways of thinking about God and the gospel that's not biblical. It's not biblical. So how do we actually know if we're being deceived, or how do we know, you know, if something's going on that we should be aware of? Let me just give you some questions here. I think these are helpful. Maybe you can write these down. I don't know if they're going to be up here. I don't think they're up here. Let me ask you this question. Is this teacher or leader pointing people to trust in Christ or to their way of thinking? Is the teacher that you're listening to, maybe it's on TV, maybe it's on, and I'm and by the way, hear me say this. Not every teacher that's on the TV or internet or anything is a false teacher. I'm not saying that. It's not just like a stereotype, everybody there. I'm just saying to you, ask these questions. Is this teacher or leader pointing people to trust in Christ or to their way of thinking? Two, does it call you to trust more in Jesus or yourself to actually do it? Are you with me? Does it call you to trust in Jesus or to look to yourself to do it? What he's saying, what they're teaching. Number three, is the Jesus they are talking about consistent with the Jesus of the Bible? There are a lot of people who use Jesus' name, and they use Jesus', they talk about Jesus, but they're not talking about the same Jesus we're talking about. Now, you may be confused by that, but um again, I love I love all people because Jesus loves all people. But Mormons, they talk about Jesus, but it's not the same Jesus we talk about in the Bible. It's not. They've changed who he is and what he has done. Jehovah's Witnesses, they've changed who Jesus is and what he has done. It's not the same. Okay? It's not the same. Four, are they using language like, I've got a new idea to teach you today you've never heard before? Or I've got some new truth that God spoke to me this week. Dangerous, dangerous stuff. So how do you protect yourself against guys like that? How do you protect yourself against people that were that are antichrists? Well, first off, we find it right here in the passage. He says to us, but you have, this is verse 20, but you have an anointing from the Holy One, and all of you have knowledge. First way, the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit. Now, some of you, when I say Holy Spirit, you're like, um, that's just weird. I don't even know what to do with the Holy Spirit. What is that? How's that work? And some of you are thinking, woo-hoo, the Holy Spirit, right? You usually get those two camps. It says in the Bible that the Holy Spirit is our helper. He's our advocate. He helps us discern what's going on. In fact, John chapter 16, verse 13 says it this way: When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth. For he will not speak on his own, but he will speak whatever he hears. The first way that we can protect ourselves against false gospels and false teaching is the Holy Spirit. If you are a believer in Jesus, catch me. If you are a believer in Jesus Christ today, the Holy Spirit resides in you, lives in you. Now you may not be listening to him, you may not be talking to him regularly, but he lives inside of you, is what the scripture teaches us. And as he is inside of you, one of his jobs is to teach you the truth. In fact, it even goes on this passage at the end. It literally says that we don't even uh this is where it says in verse uh 27, the anointing you receive from him remains in you, and you don't need anyone to teach you. I guess I can just sit down and we can just let the Holy Spirit teach us today, right? He's not saying you shouldn't have teachers. What he is saying is that every teacher should be tested by the work of the Holy Spirit. That in your minds, we're praying, God, is this true or not? Is what I'm hearing true? Is it accurate or not? Not your thinking, but the Holy Spirit's thinking in you. And so the Holy Spirit, we have the Holy Spirit with us to help lead us into truth. What's the second thing we have? Not only have the Holy Spirit, but we have this scripture. We have God's word. Now, I know I sound like a broken record, but I pick up this Bible often and I tell you guys, listen, if the only time you're reading the Bible on Sunday, or is on Sunday, you're missing out. Because God's word is living and it's active, and it gives us truth for every day. It helps us filter out the lies. You're constantly, I am constantly bombarded by lies. Deception. You need this to live, you need this for life, you need this, you know, this and this and this and this. All these things come to us, and there's these other false gospels. Put your hope in this, find life in this. The scripture always points us to who? The scripture always points us to Jesus. In fact, John chapter 5, it says this. John records there in his gospel that Jesus told these Pharisees who knew the Bible really well, that they weren't going to find life in the Bible itself, but they were going to find life in the Jesus that the Bible points them to. Remember what I said a while ago? You can actually take the Bible and you can use it in inappropriate ways, and you can use it to deceive people. You can use people, use it to lead people astray, even yourself. You can find verses where it says, delight yourself in the Lord, and he'll give you the desires of your heart, and you'll say, if I just delight myself in God, I'll get my new boat. Man, if I'll delight myself in God, he will give me that two-story house I've been praying for. Right? That's not what he's saying in the scripture. But we can use those verses sometimes inappropriately, can't we? To pick on my sports people. We can write things like, you know, um, I can do all things through Christ, so who strengthens me. So if I put my trust in Christ, I can get this touchdown. That's not what Paul's talking about, okay? He's saying we can be content. We can learn how to be content in all circumstances. Now, I joke about those things because you know people use those scriptures in ways that are not accurate to what the Bible is actually saying. And it gets even worse when we start using scriptures in such a way to point it to that we can save ourselves with our good works or whatever it is that we use for salvation. So we have the Holy Spirit, we have the Word of God, which Psalm 119, 105 says is a lamp into our feet and a light into our path. It illuminates our hearts with truth. But the third thing we have, people in the room, the third thing we have is the church. In this letter, John is writing to the people in these churches around Ephesus. And it's implied in this that these letters would be read among the people in Ephesus, right? Among these churches. And you want to know what will happen if you isolate yourself from Christian community and you try to stay true to your faith? You're gonna have a very, very hard time. The way I think about it is it says in 1 Peter 5 that the enemy is like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Anybody ever watched Animal Planet? Ever watch what happens when the herd kind of comes through and then the like the weak, the weak little animal gets off and away from the herd? What happens? Lions pounce, right? And we're the same way. When we disconnect ourselves from the community of people around us who are supporting us and encouraging us, we will find ourselves in a place where we will easily get taken out. We gotta stay connected to community. We've got to stay connected to people who will speak truth to us. In fact, Proverbs chapter 13, verse 20, the great verse to teach your kids, parents. It says this He who walks with the wise will grow wise, but a companion of fools suffers harm. If you hang out with foolish people, guess what? Harm is on the way. Anyone say amen to that, right? But if you hang out with wise people, you will grow wise. I'm not talking about people who know everything. I'm talking about people who are walking in wisdom of the scripture, the truth of God's word, the truth of the gospel. So we need the church, don't we? We need the church. And all of these can work together. And here's the cool thing is that if we remain in Christ, we will remain in his word. And if we remain in his word, we will remain in his church. And when we remain in his church, we will remain in Christ. And if we remain in Christ, we will remain in his word. And if we remain in his word, we'll remain in Christ. Do you see the cycle? Because it'll keep pointing us to the truth of who God is and who Jesus is and what he has done. So don't get isolated. In fact, Hebrews 10, 24 says it this way. And let us be concerned about one another in order to promote love and good works. Not staying away from our worship meetings as some habitually do, but encourage each other, and all the more as you see the day drawing near. What day is he talking about? The day of Christ Jesus' return. He's saying it's going to get darker, it's going to get more, there's going to be more deception, there's going to be more issues going on. And when that day comes, you're going to need to press into the community of people who will point you to the truth, who will help hold you up, encourage you in those hard times. So, friends, this morning, people, people of God and those who are seeking, how can I encourage you as we end? If you do not believe in Jesus Christ, if you've never put your trust in him, if you've never said, Jesus, you are the way, the truth, and the life, if you've never done that, you're already, in essence, in deception. You are in deception to think that there's something other than Christ that can save. And I want you to know this is a safe place to wrestle with that. We had a lady at our house on Sunday, last Sunday night, who proclaims that she's an agnostic, or she started with atheist and kind of moved to agnostic. And I love having those conversations. Not because I can change her mind, because I can't. Not because I can fix her problem, because I can't. But because Jesus loves her right where she is in her doubts and in her struggles. And you want to know why she's an atheist today or an agnostic today? Because the church is what she would say. She says it was the church. She says the church talked all about moral behavior and yet she saw all the hypocrisy there. She talked all about moral behavior, but the people didn't love one another. And I say it to you because you may be in this room today and you've got this baggage of these past experiences with the church. And I just want you to know Jesus loves you right where you are. But he offers you life. He offers you a free gift of salvation today. He offers it to you just like he did me. And I am no better than you just because I pastor a church. In fact, that's silliness. We need Jesus. And so if that's you today, if you're a person who is in this room and has never put your trust in Christ, that's where you start, is you receive the gift of salvation. And when the Holy Spirit comes in you, he will give you the ability to discern what is truth and what is lie. And his word will start to make sense. It'll start to come to life. But not only that, believers in this room, Colossians 3 says, Let the word of God dwell in you richly. If you're a Christian, if you're a believer in Jesus and you're not reading the Bible often and praying and asking God to speak to you through it, can I plead with you, please do that? Please, please get in the Word of God. You want to know how to help your marriage get better? Spend time in the Word of God, asking God to speak to you. You want to know how to be a better worker at your workplace? Get in God's Word and ask Him to speak to you. You want to know how to be a better dad? You want how to be a better mom? You want to know how to be a better friend? You want to know how to live life in freedom. Get in the Word of God and let the light of Christ in the Word illuminate your heart, believers. Don't just wait for me to spoon feed it to you on Sunday or whoever's teaching. Like get into it. The Holy Spirit will lead you at your house. He'll lead you at the park. Wherever you are, he can speak into your life. If you'll get into his word and get into the truth of God. Stay in relationships. Stay in a place where you are spending time with God daily, but stay in a place where you're also spending time with the people of God regularly. And that will help you avoid the deceptions. And some of you need to turn the TV off. Some of you need to stop listening to podcasts, stop reading books, get in God's word. I'm not saying every Christian book's wrong or bad, but I'm telling you a lot of times we get sidetracked on the issues that really aren't that important. What's important today is that we keep the message of Jesus central to all we do. And we proclaim that message to every person that we know.