Little taste of heaven, amen? Can you imagine what it will be like to sing in the accompany in the company of the redeemed with all of the angels? My, my, that day is coming. Will you take your Bibles and turn to Paul's Epistle to the Corinthians, Second Corinthians. We are now in chapter 11, and we will be examining verses one through six this morning, under the heading "Purity of Devotion to Christ."" Actually, this will be part one of what will at least be a two-partseries. It may be a three part we'll see how it goes. So follow along as I read this text second, Corinthians, 11, beginning in verse one. 

"I wish that you would bear with me in a little foolishness, but indeed you are bearing with me. 

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For I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy; for I betrothed you to one husband, so that to Christ I might present you as a pure virgin. But I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, your minds will be led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ. 

For if one comes and preaches another Jesus, whom we have not preached, or you receive a different spirit, which you have not received, or a different gospel which you have not accepted, you bear this beautifully. 

For I consider myself not in the least inferior to the most eminent apostles. 

But even if I am unskilled in speech, yet I am not so in knowledge; in fact, in every way. We have made this evident to you in all things. 

Every godly man who loves his wife, and his daughters, his granddaughters, will possess a sacred jealousy regarding them. Let some other man come and deceive them or seduce them or molest them, and they will quickly discover they have just poked a grizzly in the eye. Let some insane male pervert who identifies as a female go into the same restroom where my wife and daughters are, and they will quickly discover that they have enraged a lion that will do everything possible to protect his own. This is how Paul felt about the church at Corinth. This was his concern about the false apostles that had seduced the church that he had planted. And it's for this reason that he says, "For I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy." I understand precisely what he's saying, I share that jealousy for you.  Spiritual seduction and defection are twin evils that every Christian should guard against; that every Christian should watch for, not only in their own life, but in the life of their family and certainly in their church. And this is the great burden of every faithful pastor. No shepherd wants to see his sheep be led astray. Yet seducing spirits have sway over an increasing number of so-called preachers and pastors that are proclaiming doctrines of demons. We see it all the time. They preach to phony Christians who will not, as Paul said in Second Corinthians or Second Timothy 4:3, "they will not endure sound doctrine, but wanting to have their ears tickled, they have accumulated for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires, and have turned away their ears from the truth and turned aside to myths." 

\Dear friends. How else can you explain some of the false gospels that are out there, the false gospel of black liberation theology that has given rise to the domestic terrorist group known as Black Lives Matter. How else can you explain why ostensibly, evangelical churches are more concerned about the nebulous concept of social justice than they are about fulfilling the Great Commission to go into all the world and preach the gospel, to make disciples, to teach people whatsoever the Lord has commanded. How else can you explain the heretical commitment by so many churches to borrow the values of secular culture that undermine scripture in areas of race and ethnicity and maleness and femaleness and human sexuality. Every week we hear of another Christian college caving to the militant homosexual revolutionaries. 

I think of the term "hamartia" in the original language as one of the words for sin, and it means missing the mark; the idea that sin misses the mark of God's standard of righteousness. And any of you that know anything about sighting in a rifle or a pistol, you know that when you aim at the bullseye, if you miss the mark, you need to adjust your sights. But what the church has done is, rather than adjusting the sights, they just move the bullseye, and now the bullseye is somewhere way beyond where it's supposed to be. It's heartbreaking to watch this. Holiness and truth bears no resemblance to what it really is in Scripture. The defining spirit of our day in so many churches around the country is this new woke movement. For one to be woke, one must fully acknowledge the wickedness of white culture and having white skin. I mean, that is just utterly absurd. And yet churches buy into this. 

This is now infiltrated the Christian church, thanks to the influence of organizations like the Gospel Coalition and the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. The pastor of one such church, River City Church in Chicago, prayed this, and I'm going to give you just a sample of the prayer, "I confess that I carry a broken theology of repentance, one that can quickly repent of behaviors like lying, gossiping or envying, yet get stuck in the mud when trying to repent of complicity and complacency with white supremacy. I confess that I have spent too little time considering the ways my own sense of identity has been shaped by the ideology of white supremacy. I confess that as a white church, we have lost our ability to collectively tell the truth," and on it goes. 

Beloved, this is what happens when Christians are seduced by lying spirits and doctrines of demons, this is what happens when man rejects the truth of God's Word. God gives them over to a depraved mind. Today, increasing numbers of women are becoming pastors and preachers, a blatant violation of God's design for male/female role relationships in Scripture, and the trajectory of apostasy by women preachers that we have warned about, many of us have warned about for years, is certain proof that they were never called by God, and they operate in the flesh rather than the Spirit. Increasing numbers of, and this is hard to even say, homosexuals and transgendered people are being ordained as ministers. Incomprehensible. One church, and I use that in parentheses, in Arkansas. Arkansas is led by a transgender person who brags about how, quote, "Our church regularly gives chest binders and gender affirming clothes to trans youth." He went on to say how they helped pay for hormone treatments.

This is what happens when people wander away from the truth of the Word of God and preach a different gospel. This is why Paul was so concerned. This is why you need to be equally concerned. There is a bill coming up next week in the Tennessee legislature that mandates private insurance companies to cover infertility treatment so that any enrollee in the insurance plan can have a baby with, quote, "an individual covered under the enrollees plan of health insurance." Now, obviously homosexuals are celebrating this, and a number of so-called evangelical lawmakers are supporting it. My friend David Fowler with the family Action Council of Tennessee says this quote, "The state is asserting jurisdiction over human reproduction by regulating and requiring that private insurers pay for the creation of human life through technological means, divorced from the conjugal relation of husband and wife. In essence," he says, "the bill presupposes children are products for demand and purchase with the aid of infertility service providers. And the state of Tennessee would force insurance companies to pay the invoice, effectively meaning you and I pay for it through increased premiums." I'm reminded of what Solomon said in Ecclesiastes 9:3, "The hearts of the sons of men are full of evil and insanity is in their hearts throughout their lives." 

Oh, dear Christian, never underestimate the ingenious strategies and seductive powers of Satan to deceive. This is why we must all, like the apostle Paul, have a sacred jealousy for his holy name. We just sang about. God is the thrice Holy God. Holiness being the all-encompassing attribute that portrays his consummate perfection, his majesty and his eternal glory. He is the great "I AM." Remember in Exodus, three, verse 14. The one who therefore has life intrinsic to himself and in himself. He is utterly self-existent and eternal and unchanging. He is untainted by sin. He cannot sin. He cannot tolerate sin. This is the God we serve. This is the God of the Bible. He is morally perfect in every conceivable way, in every thought, in every action and every decree and every verdict, in every judgment upon sin; everything that he does is perfect and just. And because of this, God says in Ezekiel, 39:25, "'I shall be jealous for My holy name.'" 

Beloved, are you jealous for God's holy name? Are you jealous for the truth, for your family, for your church, for your community, for your country? In fact, one of God's names is, quote, "jealous," Exodus 20 and verse five. Deuteronomy four, verse 24 describes the Lord as, quote, "...a consuming fire, a jealous God." In Exodus, 20 and verse three, the first commandment of the 10 Commandments is, "'...you will have no other gods before Me. Your God is a jealous God.'" Idolatry is far more than worshiping images made by hands. It includes worshiping substitutes for God. It includes distortions of God. Fundamentally, they are idols of the heart. They would include anything that captures our desires, anything that we find satisfaction in more than the true and the living God. Said differently, we become idolaters when our greatest joy is found in something other than God, and we habitually then yield ourselves to the idol, and that ends up defining our character. In fact, every man and every woman will eventually become like the idol he or she serves, which is a worthless rendering of who God really is. In fact, the Psalmist states, in Psalm 1:15, verse eight, "Those who make them," referring to idols, "will become like them; everyone who trusts in them." And for this reason, the Apostle John warns us in First John five and verse 21, "Little children," referring to Christians, "guard yourselves from idols." 

So to be sure, every faithful Christian, especially pastors, will have a passionate, sacred jealousy for their family and for their congregation, that they might not be led astray by anyone that would preach a different Jesus, that would portray a different god, that would somehow distort the Bible, that would deny the importance of living a self-denying, cross-bearing, holy life in obedience to Christ. And it is this godly jealousy that is at the very heart of Paul's epistles to the Corinthians. 

Now let me remind you of the context, because we've been going through the Corinthian epistles for, I don't know, it's been over a year. So let me take you back just a little bit. Remember that the church at Corinth was a new church. It was filled with, shall we say, baby Christians. In fact, as we will see, that's what Paul called them. Most of them were still enamored by the godless culture that they had been saved out of. And this not only contributed to worldliness in the church and immorality and sectarian rivalries and overall spiritual immaturity, but it also produced within that church unbridled emotionalism that dominated their worship services; that were that were chaotic. Pagan mystery religions had deceived their hearts. They were used to erotic religion, which the Greeks called Eros. In English, we get our word "erotic" from that. It's a desire for ecstasy, for the ultimate pleasures of subjective feelings. And prior to their conversion to Christianity, all they knew was this type of religious practice in the pagan mystery religions. You will recall in our study, in months past, that they believed in sexual "exstasia." We get our word ecstasy from that, where they would get worked up into an emotional frenzy. They would start speaking hypnotic chants, they would have ceremonies in this frenzy until they experience some kind of a semi-conscious euphoric feeling of oneness with the god or the goddess that they worshiped. And this typically would end up in drunken sexual orgies. This is what they were used to. 

They also practice "enthusiasmos" - we get our word enthusiasm, as you can tell, from that. That involved frenzied formulas, foretelling, divination, revelatory dreams and visions. And of course, out of this bizarre milieu of paganism, they perverted the true and miraculous gift of languages that we read about in Acts two; the ability to speak in a foreign language that one had not previously learned, so that they could proclaim the truths of the New Covenant to the early church, to the multiplicity of languages that were coming to Jerusalem and other places. And of course, that gift was accompanied by signs and wonders. This was a blessed gift that was given to the early church to establish the truth; a gift that has since ceased on its own, according to First Corinthians 13, eight. And many of the new converts of the church associated this true gift of languages with the pagan ecstasy that they were used to, that they were accustomed to. It was called "glossolalia" which means to speak in tongues. It was ecstatic, unintelligible gibberish. Worshipers would get all worked up into an erotic emotional frenzy, in a state of ecstasy, and they would spout this unintelligible gibberish. The term "ecstasy" literally means "to go out of oneself." And they would enter into an alternate state of consciousness. They would lose all control of themselves, which they believed was a way of communing with the gods, and on and on it went. 

Indeed, they were, as Paul said, "babes in Christ," remember in First Corinthians three verse one, Paul says, "And I, brethren, could not speak to you as to spiritual men, but as to men of flesh, as to infants in Christ. I gave you milk to drink, not solid food; for you were not yet able to receive it. Indeed, even now, you are not yet able, for you are still fleshly." And like every baby, every toddler, they lacked discernment; they were easily distracted and easily deceived. Like most churches today.

In fact, any church that is weak in proclaiming the solid food of Bible doctrine will become easy prey to charlatans, to ignoramuses, who many times, just make stuff up. Paul warned the elders, you will recall, in Ephesus in Acts 20, beginning in verse 29 he said, "I know that after my departure, savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock. And from among your own selves, men will arise speaking perverse things to draw away the disciples after them." And we know biblically that this is precisely what happened in Ephesus and in Corinth, and it continues to happen in churches all around the world today, and we must guard against it here at Calvary Bible Church. 

In Corinth, false apostles with phony credentials, therefore entered the church when Paul had left it, and they launched a full-scale attack on Paul's apostolic authority and his gospel message. They advanced a different gospel. It was a gospel that was a mixture of Jewish legalism and pagan mysticism. They claimed to have secret knowledge, superior knowledge, a more enlightened understanding than what Paul had. And of course, being vulnerable to seduction, almost all of the church swallowed their scurrilous lies hook, line and sinker. SoPaul, you will recall, left Ephesus and he went to Corinth to confront these men what he called "a sorrowful visit" in Second Corinthians two one. And that visit didn't go well. It ended up with at least one of these false apostles openly insulting him. There was a public confrontation, and shockingly, most of the church did not come to his defense. Heartbreaking. 

Then he went back to Ephesus, and he wrote what is known as "the severe letter." And he had Titus deliver it to them, and later on, he learned from Titus, that most of the people had repented of their rebellion. And so now we come to Second Corinthians. Paul is responding with joy. He is relieved to see what has happened. But he is also defending his apostleship, and he is confronting some of the false teachers and their sycophants who were undoubtedly still in the church. They didn't have another church to go to down the street, so they had to stick it out. So, as I say, there were still a few copperheads in the barn, and that's what Paul is dealing with. So in the text before us, he's basically addressing these false apostles and those who remain disloyal to him and loyal to them. 

Now, let's examine Paul's defense more closely. He says, "I wish that you would bear with me in a little foolishness; but indeed you are bearing with me." There's clearly a sense of irony in Paul's statement. He's basically saying, "Look, you have foolishly born the seductive lives of the self-appointed, demonic, false apostles who engaged in self-promoting fool-speech that has energized your mutiny against me and the truth of the gospel. So now, will you bear with me? Will you humor me a little bit with my own foolishness; allow me to play the fool with them and join with those braggarts and their foolish boasting." And ultimately, his motive is to help them grasp more fully the glory of the person and the work of Christ. And as we will later see in weeks to come, the rest of his entire letter describes his selfless suffering and exposes the foolishness of his boastful rivals. 

This is reminiscent of Proverbs 26 four and five. I love that text. It says, "Do not answer a fool according to his folly, or you will also be like him." In other words, don't engage in the same emotional tirade like a fool. Don't stoop to that level. Don't try to reason with the unreasonable. But he goes on to say, "Answer a fool as his folly deserves that he not be wise in his own eyes." In other words, respond to his senseless babbling with wise, appropriate, sharply decisive retorts, lest the fool really goes on and believes how wise he really is. 

So again, Paul says, "I wish that you would bear with me in a little foolishness. " Later on, in chapter 12 in verse 11, he says this, "I have become foolish; you yourselves compelled me. Actually I should have been commended by you, for in no respect was I inferior to the most imminent apostles, even though I am a nobody." And what he's saying there, as in other places, is that he was he was mortified to have to defend himself. It was very distasteful to him, and he only did so reluctantly. And because of this, he described his defense as "foolish" on numerous occasions in Second Corinthians. 

But, catch this, because the Corinthians wouldn't defend him, he had to defend himself for the sake of the truth, for the sake of the gospel. Now what follows are three reasons they should bear with his foolishness. Let me give them to you, and today we'll only be able to look at the first one, but here they are. Number one, his zeal for the purity of Christ's bridal church. Number two, his fear of their vulnerability for a false gospel, and finally, his distress over their love for manipulative theatrics over transforming truths. 

So let's look first of all at his zeal for purity of Christ's bridal church. Notice verse two, "For I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy..." Literally, the grammar in the original language can be translated "the jealousy of God." That's what he is feeling. That's what is driving him, and here's how he describes it, "...for I betrothed you to one husband, so that to Christ I might present you as a pure virgin." You see, the Apostle Paul saw himself as the spiritual father of the Corinthian church. He saw them as his daughter, and as such, they were betrothed to Christ, not to some false Christ, not to some phony Christ that the false apostles were preaching. 

Now we must understand the background here. The Spirit of God inspired his apostle to use the analogy of betrothal and marriage among the Jews to get his point across. And all of this is ultimately rooted in the Mosaic law, as we will see. Now, think about this, Jewish weddings really consisted of two elements. You had the betrothal or the engagement, and you had the nuptial, or we would call the actual ceremony. The betrothal, or the engagement, consisted of a formal wedding contract in which a young man would be pledged, or a young woman would be pledged to a young man, passing from her father's authority to the authority of her husband. And the the engagement typically lasted about a year. Sometimes marriages were arranged by parents when the children were young, but this is typically how it happened. The betrothal could only be dissolved by death or by a formal writ of divorcement. So the engagement was binding, just like a marriage was binding. In fact, if a betrothed woman's fiance died, she was considered a widow. 

Now, during the season of engagement, it would provide the young virgin an opportunity to prove her loyalty and her faithfulness to her husband by her sexual purity and vice versa with the young husband. In fact, sexual infidelity during this time was considered adultery. You remember the story of Mary and Joseph in Matthew one. During the interim between the betrothal and the ceremony, the husband would go and prepare a place for his bride where he would eventually take her, and they would live together. Many times, this was an extension of the father's home, or the father's estate. And Jesus uses this imagery, referring to us his bridal church, you will recall in John 14, beginning in verse one, he says, "'Do not let your heart be troubled; believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father's house, are many dwelling places. If it were not so, I would have told you. or I go to prepare a place for you. If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself that where I am there you may be also.'" I had the joy of actually witnessing this, to my surprise, in the old part of Jerusalem one morning, very early, I woke up in my hotel room, the window was open, and I hear all of the shouting and chanting and singing, and they were beating drums and blowing shofar horns. And I looked out and I saw this entourage of mainly males following a young husband-to-be, who was going to get his bride, great celebration. By the way, we read of this as well, in Jesus' Olivet Discourse, in Matthew 25, in his parable of the 10 virgins that he uses to describe his return one day to to get his bridal church. You will remember in Matthew 25 verse one, he says, "'Then the kingdom of heaven will be comparable to 10 virgins who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom.'" And you will recall the story, some of them were prepared to meet him, and others were not. And then verse six says, "'And at midnight, there was a shout, "Behold the bridegroom. Come out to meet him."'" And then later on, he says in verse 13, "'Be on the alert then, for ye do not know the day, nor the hour.'" My How I long for him to come and take us unto himself to our heavenly home, don't you? By the way, are you ready? I hope you are, because Jesus is coming. 

Now, it's also important to note that during this engagement period, the father had a very important responsibility before God. His responsibility was to protect the virginity of his daughter, to keep her pure, to keep her chaste, because she was set apart to one man. You can read about this more, for example, in Deuteronomy 22 beginning in verse 13 and following; a powerful, powerful passage describing the importance of this and how a father had to prove his daughter's virginity before the elders at the city gate if her husband charged her of playing the harlot. It would have been a sin punishable by stoning. 

By the way, as a footnote, it's interesting, as we look at Scripture, we see how serious God is about sexual purity in marriage. And sadly, most Christians today are woefully indifferent about this, if not blatantly disobedient. I was reading a recent Pew Research poll that revealed that 57% of professing Christians believe that having sex outside of marriage is acceptable, a trend which will certainly grow as our culture continues in its free fall into the abyss of sexual immorality and celebrated deviancy. I might add that their definition of Christian is probably skewed, because most people, Jesus says, in Matthew seven, who claim to be Christians are not. Nevertheless, you get the idea. 

Well, the betrothal then led to the ceremony, and often it lasted a week, whereupon the marriage would be consummated. So the image of betrothal, dear friends, underscores the Corinthians marriage to Christ; a marriage that that awaits a consummation when they are presented to him in his "parousia." In his appearing, at his second coming. However, as we see here, as their spiritual father, the apostle Paul, feels this divine jealousy to preserve the purity of his bride for her husband. So he says in verse three, "But I am afraid that, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, your minds will be led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ. You see, dear friends, this is why he is defending his apostolic authority and his apostolic message, the true gospel in his epistle; he's afraid that Satan is going to deceive them through his agents, the false apostles, even as Satan deceived Eve in the garden in Genesis three. 

Let's turn there for a moment. You will recall how Satan beguiled Eve in that story, as he attempts, by the way, to do each of us. In Genesis three, and verse one we read, "Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made." If we took time, we could go to Ezekiel, chapter 28 verses 11 through 15, where we are provided with a possible description of Satan's alluring beauty being a supernatural spirit. What happened here is he possessed the body of a serpent - a serpent in its pre fall splendor - and he approached Eve alone. Removed from the protection and the authority of her husband. By the way, this is a common strategy that Satan uses to this day. He doesn't speak through serpents, but he speaks through false teachers. Paul speaks of this in Second Timothy 3:6, "For among them are those who enter into households and captivate weak women weighed down with sins, led on by various impulses; always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth." He goes on to refer to these predatory preachers as quote, "...men who oppose the truth, men of depraved mind, rejected in regard to the faith." And you will recall that, Second Corinthians 11:14, that Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. In other words, he masquerades as a heavenly, godly emissary, the very embodiment of of grace and of truth. This is how he gains access into a church; churches that are undiscerning. We can read in Jude four and his description of false teachers, how that there were certain persons that crept in "unnoticed." That's what they do. They creep in to a church secretly for the purpose of deception. 

Back to the text. In verse one, he went on, or we go on to read how he said to the woman, "Indeed has God said, you shall not eat from any tree of the garden." Let me pause here, folks. This is, the diabolical pattern of religious seduction. Cast doubt upon the meaning of what God has said, cast doubt upon the meaning of what God has said. Don't deny it, just twist it, just distort it. Give it a little spin, an alternative interpretation, a clever counterfeit; spin it so that it will say what you want it to say. 

Verse two, "The woman said to the serpent, 'From the fruit of the trees of the garden, we may eat but from the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden, God has said you shall not eat from it or touch it, or you will die.'" So she said, yeah, yeah, that's what God said. And of course, Satan knew this. She's celebrating the magnificent scope of the liberty that God has given them, that they could eat of all of the trees in the garden except one. Then notice verse four, "The serpent said to the woman, 'You surely shall not die.'" In other words, he's correcting her here. It's as if he's saying, no, no, no, dear, you're confused. I mean, what's die? Right? Have you ever seen anything die in the garden? No, no, you've got this all wrong. And why would God say that? I mean, think about it. There's nothing barred here in the garden. I mean, there, there's no prohibition. I think you misunderstood what God said. So let me tell you what, what he was saying, okay? Because obviously you don't have it right. Verse Five, "'For God knows that in the day you eat from it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.'" 

By the way, Satan perfected this over the years in what is known as Gnosticism. The apostles had to fight this, especially in the latter part of the first century. Gnosticism, it's where people claim to have ascended knowledge -that's what was going on with the false apostles - only known to the initiated, to the special people, you will be like God. It reminds me of Mormonism. They teach that you will become little gods and little goddesses and own your own planet. By the way we see this today, in many other circles, I think of the health, wealth, word faith, heretics like Kenneth Hagen and Kenneth Copeland, Creflo Dollar, Joyce Meyer. One guy, Earl Paul, he said this quote, "Adam and Eve were placed in the world as the seed and expression of God." Okay, that's plausible, but now listen to the spin, "Just as dogs have puppies and cats have kittens, so God has little gods. We have trouble comprehending this truth until we comprehend that we are little gods, we cannot manifest the kingdom of God." Well, see how clever that is, but it's also heretical. I mean, think about it, people now come to Jesus so that they can be a little god and enjoy all the things that a little god gets to enjoy, rather than coming to Jesus for the salvation of their sins and worshiping him forever. You see the twist? False religions, cults, they're notorious for this; claiming new and special revelations, always given to some prophet or some prophetess, revelation beyond what is recorded in the canon of Scripture. Now, Eve had no idea she was being deceived. She had absolutely no fear of the talking serpent. I mean you....(audio is silent, no transcription available).

……"But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached to you, he is to be accursed. Dear friend, please understand the good news of the gospel. Very briefly, the good news depends upon your understanding first of the bad news. The bad news is that as sinners, we have violated God's holy law, and therefore we deserve his holy wrath. But God, in his infinite mercy, has provided a way for we, as sinners, to be reconciled to him as a holy God by providing for us his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. The Son of God, who came and died in the stead of sinners. And every person who places their faith in what he accomplished on the cross will be saved, will be transformed, and will ultimately enter into the presence of God. And those who reject that message will perish in their sins and be confined to the solitary confinement of an eternal hell. That is the gospel in a nutshell. John MacArthur said, quote, "Lack of discernment is a major problem for the church, because the spiritual battle is an ideological one. The church's willingness to tolerate error in the name of unity, coupled with a lack of biblical and doctrinal knowledge has crippled its ability to discern. As a result, it is too often easy prey for the ravenous, savage wolves of whom both Jesus and Paul warned, (audio breaks up - no transcription available). He went on to say, "The danger false teachers pose is that they shift the focus off Jesus Christ and onto rituals, ceremonies, good works, miracles, emotional experiences, psychology, entertainment, political and social causes and anything else that will distract people. Loyalty to the Lord Jesus Christ is non-negotiable in the Christian life, so much so, that Scripture declares in First Corinthians 16:22, 'If anyone does not love the Lord, he is to be accursed.'" 

Now back to Genesis three for a moment. Eve didn't know she was being duped. How many times have we all been duped? I mean, if you knew you were being duped, you wouldn't fall for it, right? She didn't know it. So verse six, "When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate; and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate." And as a result, the entire human race was plunged into sin. 

Well, I trust this helps you better understand what Paul is saying in Second Corinthians, 11, three. He was afraid that the same thing was happening to his precious daughter, the church at Corinth. But I'm afraid that, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, your minds, it could be translated, your thoughts, will be led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ. You see, he's concerned about an intellectual deception concerning the person and the work of the Lord Jesus Christ, because if you get that wrong, it will lead to apostasy and eternal death. And that is largely where evangelicalism is today. And for the most part, discernment is all gone. Paul stated in Ephesians four, verse 14, as a result, the context here is of sound doctrinal instruction. "As a result of that, we are no longer to be children tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men by craftiness and deceitful scheming." 

Beloved, let me make it real practical to you, once you abandon the in depth, systematic, expository preaching, teaching and application of the Word of God, once you move away from that, biblical discernment will disappear. What will happen is a different gospel will replace the true gospel. It'll look almost the same, but it's got a little different twist on it, right? And then what happens is the counterfeit Christianity will replace authentic Christianity, and churches will become religious country clubs, rather than the pillar and the support of the truth. Churches will fill up with phony Christians; people that are self-deceived, people who are Christian in name only will populate these churches. This was Jesus' great warning in Matthew seven that "'..not everybody who calls me Lord will enter the kingdom, only those who do the will of the Father.'" Charles Spurgeon said quote, "A time will come when, instead of shepherds feeding the sheep, the church will have clowns entertaining the goats." And we see that so often today. And then you will have phony cultural Christians filling the church with zero biblical discernment, and they will fall for all of the silly stuff, the blasphemous stuff, some of which I've described to you this morning, because Paul says First Corinthians 2:14 that "...a natural man," an unsaved man, "does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot..." not, he will not, but, "he cannot understand them, because he is spiritually appraised." Jesus said, of unbelievers, "They are of their father, the devil,” John8:44, "...they want to do the desires of their father, who was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him." And Paul said in Ephesians four, beginning in verse 17, that unbelievers, now, mind you, unbelievers that can fill up churches and fill pulpits "...walk in the futility of their mind, being darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them; because of the hardness of their heart, and they have become callous, having given themselves over to sensuality for the practice of every kind of impurity with greediness." 

My is this not a perfect description of America today, and even a description of many evangelical churches. Sadly, many people today are imprisoned in the fortresses of deceptions that are opposed to the knowledge of God, as Paul said in Second Corinthians, 10. Scripture repeatedly warns of those who, quote, "...by their smooth and flattering speech, deceive the hearts of the unsuspecting," Romans 16:18. False teachers who, according to Second Peter two one, "...will secretly introduce destructive heresies." And they will distort the scriptures to their own destruction Second, Peter 3:16. What happens? They preach a false Jesus. They preach an idol of their own making, and for the most part, the Jesus today is the smiley face. Jesus, oh, he's just all loving. He's just tolerant of everything. He winks at sin, non- judgmental. And so churches preach this man-centered gospel filled with tolerance and inclusivity, but these people know nothing of the true gospel. That's why Paul, when he came to Corinth, said, 'For I determined to know nothing among you except Christ and Him crucified." And in First Corinthians, one eight, he says, "The word of the cross is to those who are perishing foolishness." And that's the way; no wonder you have so many professing Christians today that are absolutely indifferent to the militant unbelief of Cultural Marxism. It's staggering to me, they're indifferent towards gross immorality and the brutal dismemberment of unborn and inconvenient children, all of which is being promoted by the Democratic Party and big tech and the media and educators and Hollywood elites. But this is all part of Satan's strategy to thwart the redemptive purposes of God that will bring glory to his name. This is why Paul was so committed to the gospel. First Corinthians 1:23, "We preach Christ crucified, to Jews a stumbling block, and to Gentiles foolishness, but," and I'm so glad there's a but there, "but, to those who are the called, called by his grace alone, both Jews and Greeks." It is Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God, and this is why he had such a zeal for the purity of Christ's bridal church. 

I want to close with a story. When I was in Africa, once, I remember going on kind of a little Safari type of thing, where they take us out into the wilds, and we're able to see all of the beasts that you would normally not want to get close to. And I remember they showed me a video that happened in that area. And that video included, I forget exactly, but I think there were six lionesses that were on top of a water buffalo that they had killed, and they were in the process of gaining their nourishment from what God had provided for them. And then you begin to see these vile, vicious creatures called hyenas, beginning to come closer and closer. At first there were only three or four, and the lionesses would chase them off. And then there were five or six, and then there were, I don't know how many, a lot, and the lionesses began to get nervous, and you could see they began to relinquish their kill. And then suddenly, through the brush, over here on the side, you see a flash of something, and it is a male lion coming out to protect the lionesses, and it happened so fast. It was amazing. Literally, he killed three of those hyenas within probably two seconds, and they scattered like scalded dogs.  

Beloved, would that we be equally vigilant and ferocious and safeguarding the truth of the gospel, and the word of God for our families and for our church? Let's pray together. 

Father, we thank you for the eternal truths of your word. And I pray that what we have heard here today will penetrate our hearts in such a way as to transform us ever more into the likeness of our precious Savior. And for those who know nothing of the saving and transforming power of the gospel, O God, would that you move upon their hearts today in such a way as to cause them to run to the foot of the cross and plead for the mercy that you will so freely and quickly give to those who are genuinely humble of heart and repentant. Father, we thank you for the hope and the help that is ours in Christ. And we thank you for this time you have provided for us this morning, for it's in Christ's name that I pray, Amen.