Sermon Tone Analysis

How Easy it is to be Deceived

What strikes me is the ease with which many people are deceived.

Two things account for this:

1). a lack of grounding in the Word of God.

2). a lack of life a life spent abiding in Christ.

Or to put it another way, when people do not have theological depth and do not have vital experience of the Holy Spirit they are sitting ducks for the deceiver and the antichrist.

Pluralism's Basic Premise is that All Religions are True

In his recent book, author Mark Clark wrote:

If you want to understand the dogma of religious pluralism, consider a scene from the comedy movie Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby.

If you haven't seen it, Ricky is a professional race car driver whose car crashes during a race.

Thinking he's on fire, he runs around the track crying out, "Help me, Jesus!

Help me, Jewish God! Help me, Allah!

Help me, Tom Cruise!

Use your witchcraft on me to get the fire off of me! Help me, Oprah Winfrey!"

In other words, when it comes to god, you'd best hedge your bets.

One god doesn't necessarily exclude the other gods, so don't limit yourself to just one when you can believe in all of them at once!

This concept has its roots in Hindu and eastern philosophy, and has largely been adopted in Western culture.

It can be found in several popular versions:

I am absolutely against any religion that says one faith is Superior to another.

I don't see how that is anything different than spiritual racism -Rabbi Shmuley Boteach

My position is that all great religions are fundamentally equal.

-Mahatma Gandhi

One of the biggest mistakes humans make is to believe there's only one way.

Actually, there are many diverse paths leading to God. -Oprah Winfrey

Pluralism’s basic premise is that all religions are true, or at least partially true; and have value.

And in our culture, it is considered narrow-minded and judgmental to believe anything else.

So how do we respond to the theology of Ricky Bobby?

BIG IDEA: True Believers will Remain in Fellowship with Christ.

THREE WAYS WE BELIEVE THE TRUTH OVER THE LIE

1.

We should all be spiritual clock watchers.

(All creation is marked by hostility from the world, we are in the end times.)

The Increasing activity of the spirit of the antichrist.

John points out that not only has the last hour come, “but you have heard that the antichrist us coming, so many antichrists have come.”

The last hour is a time when many antichrist will be present.

Note: The word antichrist means against Christ or against the Church.

Daniel calls the antichrist, “the coming prince.”

(Daniel 9:27).

Paul calls Him “the man of lawlessness.”

(2 Thessalonians 2:3).

John will picture him as “the beast from the sea.” (Revelation 13:1-10).

*Clock watchers live with a sense of urgency.

The Antichrist has a Period of time

John says at the beginning and end of verse 18 that “it is the last hour.

John is saying that it is the last our over 2,000 years ago.

Jesus inaugurated the last hour.

This is the time between the first and second coming of Christ.

John is specifically speaking of Jesus warning in Matthew 24:5;24 where he says “many will come in my name, saying I am the Christ, and they will lead many astray …

John see’s not only the spread of the gospel throughout the earth but also will be many false Christs and false prophets who will lead many astray.

*Clock watchers recognize Spiritual Error.

But we are tempted to shrug off these warnings because of the relativism of our culture.

All around us people are saying, ‘It doesn’t really matter what you believe so long as you believe it sincerely.’

What they mean is that we no longer believe in the truth.

We no longer believe in anything objective out there that corresponds to reality (let alone anyone!)

All that we know is that we cannot know.

So with the enlightenment of contemporary intellectual tolerance, Christians are permitted to believe in God, if they insist, but not to propagate such beliefs or expect others to get involved.

It is just one package on the shelves of the ideological supermarket, looking a bit passé these days; but if you like it, you buy it.

‘If it’s true for you, that’s fine; we all have our own beliefs.

Sincerity rules, OK?’

Note: it is possible to be sincerely wrong.

As much as we might try to live in a world where there are no absolutes in practice none of us can live that way.

They are liars who deny that Jesus is the Messiah

Their method is deception and seduction.

They do not directly appose Jesus Christ, they redefine Him.

“He may have died on the cross as a martyr,” they affirm, “but He did not die as a Savior.”

THE ANTICHRIST

The Resistance

v.18 - anyone who apposes Christ and His work is an antichrist.

John does make the distinction between the anti-christ who will come at the end of the age and the antichrists that are already here among us.

The antichrist at the end of the age will appear someday.

He will be the counterfeit Christ who will come on the scene in History and the whole earth will marvel at him and follow him.

Newsweek recently reported that 19 percent of all Americans and 50 percent of those who accept Biblical prophecy believe that the antichrist is already among us.

Whether he is already here I cannot nor should I speculate.

What I do know is that he will come and the spirit of antichrist is alive and well today.

People are being deceived everyday by false teachers and false doctrines.

So, be on guard against those who attack the Biblical teaching of Christ.

The antichrist is a usurper, he is one who takes a place of authority that he was never intended to take.

The reaction—v.

19.

Some people are not willing to pay the price and follow Christ.

ANTICHRISTS ABANDON THE CHURCH

We have had people at the Journey who professed at one time to be followers of Christ who have now abandoned the faith.

When it came to the cost for following Christ they were not willing to pay the price.

The greatest dangers of the Church are from within the walls of the Church not the outside.

Satan is a master deceiver and strategist.

He knows that if he can discredit the Church and get it to turn on itself he can win the battle.

He deploys his spiritual Trojan Horse

Recall the story of the original Trojan Horse.

It was a wooden horse used by the Greeks during the Trojan war to enter the city and win the war.

In the computer war a Trojan Horse is any malware misleads users to its true intent.

Trojans generally spread by some form of social engineering; for example, where a user is duped into executing an email attachment disguised to appear innocuous (e.g., a routine form to be filled in), or by clicking on some fake advertisement on social media or anywhere else.

Although their payload can be anything, many modern forms act as a backdoor, contacting a controller who can then have unauthorized access to the affected computer.

Ransomware attacks are often carried out using a Trojan.

This is exactly what we do when we ignore or allow those who are not truly followers of Christ to infiltrate our ranks and lay Trojan horses into our midst.

Physically they desert the Church

2:19 “Perseverance is the proof of possession”

“Us and Them”

1st The “they” team did not last they abandoned the faith.

2nd Their departure proves that they were never really apart of us to begin with.

The “us” team remains in fellowship, they endure to the end.

We call this eternal security, “perseverance of the saints.”

John addresses this truth in John 10:27-29 where He say’s “My sheep hear my voice, I know them, and they follow me.