Not New Things (Issues Facing the Church) - Part 5

Well, I'm closing out this series called "Not New Things" or "Not New Issues." The title of the series is not the important part. But this is the last sermon in that series. And it could have been 4. The only reason I did 5 was because the last part of it I sort of prepared twice. And then I liked what I prepared on the second part. So what I did was the last half of tonight's message is essentially a duplicate except for I'm going to try to make it applicable. It's a long story, but if you listened to last week, it's going to sound a little familiar, but I did that on purpose. So, well, I did the preparation on accident, but I'm using them on purpose.

Some of the things that have been in this series, I have to confess to you, have been hard to articulate. They've been hard to, like, express in any sort of understandable way, and that is actually part of the problem when you're discussing what's going on in the Christian world worldwide. Not just— I've emphasized over and over again that this series is not about all Christians because if you didn't know, there are various degrees of, for lack of a better word, faithful Christians. Meaning throughout history there have always been essentially solid, biblical, orthodox, historic, traditional, correct-thinking Christians.

So if you think of a tree, like with the trunk, There have always been faithful Christians that are attached to the trunk of Christianity since its inception. There have always been true Christians, in other words. But in that, in the branching over the centuries, it has happened where splitting off into various thoughts and denominations and other things, the purity of the actual truth of the Christianity can kind of get filtered so that you might have somebody that isn't as connected to the trunk, but they're still not all the way into false teaching or some crazy religion. They're still Christian, but they're not as connected to orthodoxy.

So it's kind of hard sometimes to talk about anything with any sort of broad, general understanding because depends on which denomination you're talking to, which church you're talking to, which pastor you're talking to. And you can go on and on, podcast or YouTube or whatever else. So it can be hard to talk about things in any sort of general way. You almost always have to dig in to say, "Which specific group are you talking about before I address the doctrine you're talking about? Because this group thinks of it differently than that group." and this group, and this guy thinks of it differently than this guy.

And you do hear people criticize Christianity and say things like, "Well, everybody has their own interpretation," which is true that lots of people have interpretation, but maybe the value of this kind of study is for us to get back to the right understanding, which is there is only one correct interpretation of Scripture. So there's a million interpretations of philosophy and religion and thoughts like that, but there is only one correct interpretation of the Bible. That might surprise you to hear that there's not multiple interpretations. God doesn't mean multiple things when he speaks. He means one thing when he speaks. And the task for us as Christians is to use sound, solid biblical hermeneutics, the right methodology, to figure out what he has said in his word, to get the right interpretation. Then once we have the right interpretation, to make the right application of the interpretation. And in theory, hopefully in fact, you become most connected to the trunk, to the the pure real thing, because you're at the source. You're at the source of Scripture.

So in this series I've tried, and I don't know to what degree of success I've been able to accomplish it, what I've tried to show is that in the more true conservative theological Christian world, that it is in our world, in the conservative world, where these things that I've been talking about are dangerous. These are the things that are creeping not into the Christianity or religion in general in our world or our country, but in supposedly good churches, denominations, histories, traditions. And so I'm talking about the things that we, as normal historical— sometimes when I invite people to our church, I will say, "You should come to my church. It's vanilla." And that might sound negative, but for those of you who have had really good vanilla, you know it's hard to beat really good vanilla, right? It's hard to beat the pure, plain thing. Like sometimes you can have vanilla ice cream that— have you ever had the Costco vanilla ice cream? It's so good. Man, is it good. Anyway, when you have the real good pure thing, sometimes when you start adding things to it, you're taking away from the purity and the goodness of the thing. So our church is vanilla. What I mean by that is we don't have candy sprinkles. We're not here to impress. We're trying to tell the truth. We're trying to tell the truth from the Bible and what God says in His book.

So to kind of boil down for you what I've been trying to say, it's something along these lines. If, as a historic, traditional, orthodox, and I use the word orthodox meaning the doctrine is orthodox, not that we're a part of an orthodox denomination by name, title. Orthodox means accurate, straight-cut doctrine. That's what it means. Historical, biblical. We believe the same thing Paul did in the first century. We believe the same thing John did in the first century, right?

So when you hold to historic orthodox doctrine and teaching, in theory, you stay pure, you stay solid, you stay foundational. But over the years, influences creep into the church. Churches, liberal churches and conservative churches alike. And if you're new to the faith, conservative and liberal does not mean politics. We're not talking about Republican or Democrat. When we say conservative, we mean people who hold that the Bible is true, it's trustworthy, it's infallible, it tells the truth, all those things. It's accurate, has no contradictions in it. All those things mean that we hold to the Bible literally, while a liberal would not hold to it liberally. They would think of it as something that you can decide whether it's true or not, or this part's true or that part's not true necessarily.

So when— in historic conservative churches, what you have seen now lately is what I started the series with, is saying we don't hold to what we used to hold to, sola scriptura, that scripture alone is our authority, properly understood and interpreted. So if you do that, you're essentially throwing the Bible out. If you don't say that the Bible is your sole authority, now you're the sole authority, or the church is, or the denomination is, or whatever the religion. So if the Bible isn't your authority, You take the Bible and you set it aside. And then what you do— here's the crazy thing, and it always happens— is you then replace that Bible that you just put aside with your own. You replace it with a Bible that you begin writing, or your denomination begins writing, or your pastor begins writing. And now that Bible becomes your main Bible. It becomes your main source of truth.

Now, if you have that source of truth, how are you going to get the resources for your Bible? Well, you're going to get them from your culture. You're going to get them from your politics. You're going to get them from your society. You're going to get them from the internet. From cat videos on TikTok. You're going to get your source of truth. When you set aside God's truth, you're going to build your own source of truth, and you're going to use the resources at your disposal. If you live in 2026, those resources happen to be the internet. They happen to be social media. They happen to be the world you live in. So you start writing your own Bible, and you start wanting to base your truth, your religion that you've just invented by setting aside God's word. You have invented a new religion, a new religion about your kingdom, the kingdom of earth. And your satisfaction, you've essentially denied God, denied his power, you denied his authority, and you have a new thing when you do that.

And I actually think that the danger of that is now in the conservative world, not in the liberal world, or the modern world, or the pagan world, or the heretic world. It's happening with us, where our people, denominations that we would have held to over the years, right now, I've already mentioned this in the discussion on sexual attraction, huge move right now where people are having to address the PCA, the Presbyterian Church in America, which has been a solid denomination as far as Presbyterianism is concerned. And they have been having to be rebuked because they're adopting this group called Revoice, which is accepting that, that method, understanding of those things. So now even internally in conservative worlds that over history have been the kind of people are standing for truth, those people are infighting right now. So they're happening internally.

So when you understand Scripture correctly, and when I say correctly, I mean that word as literally as I can mean correctly. When you understand Scripture correctly, there is only one correct way to understand Scripture, and that is to use the right methods to understand Scripture. Not you guessing, not you saying, I like it, say, I believe I want it to say this, and somebody else says, well, I believe it, I want it to say this, and they're contradictory. And you say, "Well, we can both believe whatever we want about it." No, that's not how it works. You can both believe that the dog won't bite you too, but the dog might bite you. Okay, your beliefs don't change the Scripture.

So Scripture correctly interpreted, rightly divided brings solid, acceptable practices and churches. But when you marginalize Scripture, when you put it aside, when you minimize it, when you dismiss it, you see the chipping away, the erosion of solid biblical churches, and Christians. These things are close to home. As some of you know, Cedarville, they got in real— in fact, that's what Sam will teach in a couple of weeks in Sunday school. They got in trouble where they started entertaining open theism. So we're going to discuss that in 2 weeks in Sunday school class. That's a heresy. And Cedarville had to address it internally. There were people in leadership at Cedarville. And so that's a solid college, right? That's a solid place of education. So these things are hitting home.

So all of this is to say, If you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything. The old saying is true. And we need to stand for the authority of Scripture. What I've never heard over the years, I've never heard anybody come to me and say, "P.J., I know this has been the accepted orthodox position of whatever, salvation, God's sovereignty, David and Bathsheba, whatever. It doesn't matter. Whatever the subject is in the Bible. But now I'm not sure I hold that. Here's why I'm having trouble holding that." Because of— and then they finish that sentence with a chapter and verse. That never happens. It is always, I heard a guy teaching, or did you hear what so-and-so used to say who used to be solid and now he's not solid? I've been following a guy on YouTube. Oh, I went to a conference. Oh, I read a book. These are the things that people say right before they tell me they're thinking about questioning a solid doctrine. No one ever says, I've been studying Scripture and I have trouble thinking that God loves sinners. Nobody ever says that. 'Cause when you read Scripture, you learn God loves sinners. You can't— if you study Scripture, you get to the core meanings of Christianity.

Now, all of this assumes, and that's not a safe assumption, that you can interpret Scripture correctly, that you know the tools, the methodology, how to study the Bible. If you don't know that, go to a good church. In fact, I was thinking we might want to teach that on Wednesday night, how to study the Bible. But I do want you to be thinking about these things. What is your source of truth? Do you have a truth? Does your neighbor have a truth? If they're contradictory, whose wins? What if your neighbor's truth is that you should die and you're a nuisance to them? Is their truth true? So where do we get truth? We get it from Scripture. We don't get it from our own hearts. If our truth is coming from within, like everything else coming from within, it's corrupt and it will lead us down a path of trouble.

This— if you want to know why there's 2,000 denominations out there and then a thousand thousands and thousands more of self-authority, self-governing, autonomous Christians out there. That's why, because people are making their own Bibles. They got their own Bibles in their head they're living by, and they're not living by the real one properly handled.

So I'll pray, and then we'll dig into a few of these thoughts and just sort of wrap up the series. I'm going to talk about confusion a little bit. If this isn't confusing already, it'll be even better when I talk about confusion. We'll address some of these things to kind of wrap the idea up, to get down to the core understanding that the way you get information is not the way the world gets information. You don't want to go to the same sources that are leading people astray. If you use the same sources that people who are led astray use, you will be led astray. We need to get back to Scripture.

Let's pray. Father, um, it is hard. There's so many moving parts to all of these things. Everything going on in the world with Christianity Online, with the politics of the world, war, everything happening. There's so much information are flying in all directions, it can be hard to stop down and discuss anything with any sort of meaning. Things are flying so fast that we're almost never really focused on anything. So I'm asking, Father, that at least for this time together tonight, we would at least calm down a bit and think about important things. And then when we do, if your word tells us to zero in and focus on some things, that we would, and we would find strength and comfort, and that our feet might be on solid ground instead of on the shifting sands of culture. So please help us find something to stand on. In Jesus' name, amen.

Yeah, I already feel a little bit antsy that I'm not going to be as clear as I want to be on this. And even when I was typing it, I remember typing faster than I could think, and that's never a good sign that my fingers are moving faster than my brain. But if you see in your notes, I say here that there is nothing new. You know that that comes from Ecclesiastes where Solomon says, "There's nothing new under the sun." What does man do when there's nothing new under the sun? Well, what he does is he tries to invent something new or take the old things and reinvent them and put the candy sprinkles on, make them special, make them different, make them exciting.

Paul the apostle, when he was in Greece, he saw the Athenians at the Areopagus, and this is at the time, this would be like the brightest of the bright, the most intelligent people in the world were in Greece at the time. And Paul was on his way and he was moving through and he noticed these people having these conversations. He was grieved in his spirit. It bothered him because they were given over to idolatry. It bothered him that they thought that they were so smart and they were so intelligent and they were the smartest people on earth in Greece, but they didn't believe in Jesus Christ. So he went in to talk to them. And he addresses them in Acts 17. And one of the things that's there that describes those people, this is what describes them. It says that, "For all the Athenians and foreigners who were there spent their time in nothing else but either to tell or to hear something new," or some new thing.

We want something new, something novel, something exciting. Don't tell us the same old things. Don't give us the old news of last week. Don't give us the old news of who used to be smart or intelligent, your favorite theologians. And by the way, when Paul does those things and addresses those people, I don't know if you know, but he uses pop culture sometimes. Like he will quote Epimenides the poet, who's a pagan poet. That's important because that would be like, I don't know, Taylor Swift or something, like it'd be like quoting somebody popular to make a point. Like even, you know, even this country singer says that, or even Star Wars or something says that. I don't recommend you do that, but it is important that Paul, when he addresses that some new thing, he's really addressing the current culture of his day. He's addressing the present-day issues, but he's doing it on their terms and he's using their language.

And he even says that there when he addresses them, that I'm looking around here at the pantheon of gods that you have and you have all these gods up here. And you know, the Greek gods that you all studied in school, in elementary school, and then forgot about. But then he says, there is this one up here, this one god you have that is the unknown god, right? So I see that you have all your gods, the pantheon of gods, but there's one up there that you're calling the unknown god. And then Paul very cleverly says, he's the one I'll explain to you. You don't know the real God. You might know all those other gods, but the one you don't know, I will explain him to you. And he does. He explains. In general terms, he doesn't quote the Old Testament, which is very interesting that Paul doesn't quote Scripture. He just gives a general summary of the way God has worked through time, and he addresses them directly.

But the thing I want you to catch is it is not new to get bored of what's going on around you. It is not new to need constant stimuli and entertainment. This is not something that happened with the advent of the internet. That's why I'm calling this series that they're not new issues. This has been around since the first century where people needed the latest greatest thing. You all know what FOMO is, right? The fear of missing out. Like, oh no, if I'm not on that thing or I didn't see that thing that everybody else saw or whatever viral video or whatever's happening out there, if I'm not connected to it, then I'm left out. I'm not whatever the word is these days, gas or cool or whatever the right way of saying it is. Then I'm not connected. I don't understand. And I'm left out and I must not be, I don't know, cool or important. And so this idea of feeling that you need to be involved in every new thing is not a new idea. Something that's been going on forever.

Now, I do want to take a timeout for us old people. I still think of myself as young. I can still do a cartwheel. I still think of myself as relatively cool and connected to the culture. I like making the kids feel uncomfortable. You want to know how fast things go? There's no really young kids in here, but if I said 6, 7 now, even that's out of style already. Things are moving so fast that you can't even know the cool thing because it's already gone before you know it. It passes by so fast. But what I was going to say I'm trying to say is it can be that for us who are older— and I do ask anybody with the gray hairs in here to stay with me on this— to think that old is good and young is bad. And because of that, we might just be holding to our old things because they're old, not because they're good. And we can stagnate. We can stagnate. We can think by holding on to our cherished systems and our old ways of thinking that we're doing something good. And we need to be careful of that because we are supposed to be active spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ. We're supposed to just use God's methods to do that. But what we're not supposed to do is fight every new thing and then do nothing.

So I want to make sure we're clear that we're not just— I'm not just arguing for things to stay the same because I'm old and I'm conservative. No. I want to make sure that we're careful. It's okay to have ideas. It's okay to try things. It's okay as long as the things you're trying come out of a desire for the fulfillment of the Great Commission. Of God being glorified, not just scratching an itch that we might have or trying to mirror culture because we love the culture. So new things are not necessarily all bad things. That's not what I'm saying here. But I am saying be careful if the search for new things, if all you're doing is desiring the itch. Because sometimes we might not even want the itch scratched. We just want the itch. We want some new thing. And now that this itch has been scratched, I want to get on to a new itch. I want the next greatest thing. And I'm talking about in the church world, not in the world world. I'm talking about us Christians, like, okay, what's going on now? What's the latest book now? Who's the famous teacher now? What's the subject out there right now in the church world being discussed right now? There's some new thing. I think that it applies to unbelievers, but it also applies to believers.

Now, this is the next part that I'm going to talk about confusion, and it's going to be confusing. So hang in there. I'm going to ask you to try to overcome me being confusing, and try to use superintelligence and maybe your own ability to think through what I'm about to say. Because here's what I'm saying. If our world throws off the Bible, and it is, it has, and the conservative world has too. It's starting to assume that it's biblical without actually studying the Bible, right? It's taking for granted that it's biblical, even though it may not be. And then there's pressure to respond with what's going on in the outside world, where everything's going 1,000 miles an hour, where there's a million thoughts, there's a million doctrines, There's a million heresies. All these things are happening out there that what we might do is try to respond to all of that with more and more noise and just add to the noise instead of filter out the noise and get back to the real thing. And that's what I mean here.

I have the passage, a couple of them, 1 Corinthians, where we know that God is not the author of confusion, but of peace, as in all the churches of the saints. So God does not want confusion. So some confusion is inevitable because people are— I was going to say dumb, but whatever, unintelligent, or whatever the right way of saying it is. When we get involved, there's confusion, okay, because people are confusing. And then James says, "If you have bitter envy and self-seeking in your hearts, do not boast and lie against the truth. This wisdom does not descend from above but is earthly, sensual, demonic. Where envy and self-seeking exist, confusion and every evil thing are there."

So when people cast off the authority of the Word of God and they began doing things for selfish reasons. In other words, when you're man-centered, and this goes for individuals, but I'm really talking about the church. When the church starts to say, "We need to do something for us, for people, to make people get involved and to make people happier and to make people feel some sort of way about being a Christian. We need to find some way to connect people to the church in a way and we'll start giving them things to make it appeal to them and scratching their itch." Instead of they'll— trying to say, instead of them getting their itch scratched from out there in the world and social media and entertainment and drugs and alcohol and everything else, let's give them some counter or alternative. When we do that and we start inventing ways to make people happy, things get confusing.

You make simple, the simple gospel, complex by saying the simple gospel and discipleship and understanding the Word of God are not enough. Have you ever heard the phrase that a camel is a horse designed by a committee? Do you understand what that means? So you put a committee of people together and you say, "Let's design a horse." And instead of the majestic, beautiful horse, they design a camel. And that's what happens when you put people in groups. There used to be one of these motivational posters that was an anti-motivational poster, and it used to say, "Never underestimate the power of stupid people in groups." So if people throw off the Word of God and its wisdom and its authority, and they decide instead for themselves to try to invent some satisfying, meaningful, passion-filled life, they will do it with resources that are not God's resources that will then confuse things and make a simple thing like the gospel that Jesus saves sinners into a complex thing that's hard to understand and doesn't make any sense.

To where over time you can lose the meaning of the word gospel. You remember not long ago— this is how fast the news goes— you remember it wasn't just months, maybe even a year ago, when the person being examined by— was it the Senate?— was asked what a woman was? She didn't answer. She didn't know how to answer what a woman was. What's a woman? Uh, er, uh. Well, that's what happens with the gospel too. The more confused things get, if you ask 10 people, what is the gospel? Some person's gonna say it's the music that African Americans sing. Some people are gonna say it's the way to be happy. Some people are gonna say it's the way to be prosperous. Some people are gonna have no idea what the word gospel means. Can you define the good news of the gospel? Are you able to do it simply? To where you can tell somebody in a short conversation with little or no detail, without having to make things crazy and confusing, can you just tell somebody that Jesus died so that sinners can be saved? And you're a sinner, you violated God's commandments, and you need to believe in the Lord Jesus and trust him as your Savior. Is that hard to say? That is what the gospel is, that Christ died for sinners according to the scripture.

So when things get confused and we start adding things, scripture is not cool anymore, right? Scripture is not in vogue anymore. It's not enough. It's boring. It's an old book. It's archaic. Why are we reading that book? Let's do new things. Let's get some AI Christianity going, right? By the way, AI is terrible at Christianity. Be careful, please. If you're Googling stuff these days, please watch out. I've seen some nutty things when it comes to AI and the faith. It's wild. So like I said, it's okay to do things, but it's not okay to do anything. You have to do everything you do according to Scripture. And if you get things confused enough over time, you might not only— not do you lose the gospel, you can lose the gospel, you can lose every part of the faith.

Now years ago, I don't want to throw anybody under the bus because their family is still here and some of them are here tonight. But we heard the story of a family that would drive by the church off hours when we weren't here. You know, they would be in their car with their family and then drive by and the kids in the car would yell, "Donuts!" Now you only know that's funny if you come to Sunday school and know that there's donuts in Sunday school and that the kids had equated this building with the donuts in between Sunday school and service. That's what they saw when they drove by there. That's the donut place. And as silly as that is and as funny as that is, hey, there's all kinds of things that people might say when they drive by a place like this. Friends. Those are my friends in there. Oh, that's the place where they make me feel good in there.

There's any number of wrong things that can be said when you drive by this building. What's supposed to happen is what would happen if you drive by the Thessalonian church. Do you remember what was said of the Thessalonians? That the Word of God sounded forth from that church. That if you were to drive by the Thessalonian church, you couldn't because it was in the first century, you didn't have a car, but you know what I mean. Whatever, if you're on a donkey or however you went, traveled in the first century, you go by the Thessalonian church, everybody knew that's the place where they teach the Bible in there. In there they know the Bible. That place where those people gather, you know, Jerry there over with the Thessalonians, that guy knows the Bible. You talk to him, He knows the word. That's what they were known for. That was their identity.

But now, this is the church across town with the good music. This is the church across town that does the dramas and the theater. This is the church across town that has the really good sports program. And these are the kind of things that we might be known for instead of the most important thing. So this confuses the gospel. That's what I'm trying to say is that when you throw the Bible out, over time, things can get so confusing that the actual basic core truths of Christianity can be convoluted. And again, I can't say it enough that I'm talking about us. I'm not talking about just the world in general or liberal churches or denominations that aren't biblical. I'm talking about us.

We can feel the need to react to our culture and society to try to appeal to people and give them what the society has given them to try to— like it's a competition. If we can win their attention instead of saying, "The Bible is true. You should come here and we'll teach it to you." And all that noise out there, as much as it might be exciting to you to go from thing to thing every week, That's just noise, and the Bible has stood the test of time, and you should trust the Word of God. So that's the idea.

Now, the last part here. What if you got out of here early? You wouldn't even know what to do. Marsha's in the other room, because if she was in here, she'd be laughing that I said that. She always teases me when I say we're going to get out on time, because she doesn't think we're going to. So I know you're in there. She can hear me right now. I know you're in there saying it right now, Marsha. I can feel that you're saying it.

So because We have the tendency to have a hole and then fill it with our things instead of God's things. If we put the Bible aside and now we have our own Bible, and then we make our own religion based on our own Bible, if that's the way we're functioning, and I do believe we tend to do that. If we don't have a new thing, we'll just make our own thing. And then when we make our own thing, I'm trying to say tonight that now the actual basic simple truths that we're supposed to believe and live out as a Christian become complex and confused, and we don't even know what we're supposed to do anymore.

Yeah, we're supposed to help people, but we're also supposed to pray, and we're supposed to go to church, but I'm also supposed to help my neighbor, and I don't really even know what to do anymore. So when things get confused, the important thing to do is to find healthy balance. And what we can do— there's some things I'm going to say here that were from last week too.

And what we can do is say, because of all the noise, because of everything going on, then what I'll do is I'll do nothing. That's how I'll fix it. Then I know if I do nothing, then I won't get any trouble, right? Except for the part where you're supposed to do something. We're Christians. We're supposed to be living our faith. It's not okay for us to do nothing. We're supposed to be learning what God says, internalizing the Word of God, walking with Him, loving Him, having Him tell us what He wants for our life, having Him tell us, "This is how you can make Me happy." Because that's the point. You were born, if you didn't know that or not, to make Him happy, not you happy. He's the center of the universe, not you. And so if He made you for that purpose, and now you say, "Man, with all the confusion, I don't even know. I've seen 42 podcasts and 95 TikToks, and I don't even know what I'm supposed to think as a Christian. So what I'm going to do is do nothing." Wrong. That's the wrong answer. What you're supposed to do is figure out what the right thing to do is.

So I have the verse here that everybody knows really well. I alluded to it this morning. "Do not answer a fool according to his folly, lest you also be like him." I heard somebody say once, that be careful arguing with a fool. Have you ever heard this before? Be careful arguing with a fool because from a distance they won't be able to tell the two of you apart. So the idea, if I watch you arguing with a fool, I'm not going to know you're not a fool. You're both going to look like fools to me, right? So that's something like what the proverb is saying here. The idea is that you don't want to see foolishness and then respond to it with foolishness. That's the idea. You don't want to see this foolishness of our crazy world and say, "Well, I'll just— so, PJ, I hear you saying that people are inventing their own religion, a religion that isn't according to what God says. They're not defining things the way God defines things. They're not taking God's word and applying it to their lives or their churches. They're making everything up. And so what I'll do to fix that is I'll make up my own version to fix that." That is answering a fool according to his folly. You cannot come up with just another piece of noise to fix all the noise. This is why Scripture becomes so important.

So it doesn't help us to, "Okay, well, if social media has given a lot of garbage, I'll fix it by putting good things on social media." So now I'm with the fools out there arguing according to— with their folly. "I'll just do 20-minute little soundbite sermons and that'll fix it. I'll just avoid doctrine altogether." Hey, if I avoid doctrine, then you can't get any hot water, right? Won't talk about theology, we'll just talk about You know, just basic Jesus stuff. And this is what ends up happening to where now you— there is not a lot of correct stuff out there.

So instead of you finding the right way, in God's way, of doing the correct thing with the correct information in the correct environment by making disciples and having gathered people discipled, you go out there in the world and do another version of the noisy thing that doesn't do anything except add to the confusion. And so we want to be careful. Out there blabbing and just yelling and hoping that, well, if I get out here and I yell loud enough, maybe somebody will listen to me.

I'll just remind you, I'll ask you, I love asking this because I already know the answer. When was the last time you've seen a lot of comments on the internet, on news sites, on YouTube, on TikTok, on X, on Facebook, on all of them? You've been out there on Instagram, you've seen lots of comments. I know you have. If you've been on the internet, you've seen comments. Let me ask you, When was the last time your mind was changed from A to B based on an internet comment? Not an internet video. Not an internet piece of content. I'm talking about a comment where somebody got on a video and said, he is saying this, but I think this. And then you read that, this, and oh, okay, well, now I agree with you, Corvette Lover 969 or whatever your name is, your screen name, not a real person. When? When was the last time you were convinced? When was the last time a YouTube commenter, a TikTok comment, a news commenter, said something that changed your mind to such a degree that maybe you felt the need to write them.

I left out Reddit. Reddit's the worst for this thing that I'm talking about. 4chan, all those things where there's just free flow of idiotic ideas. We're like, oh, OK. It's hilarious. Judah and I have an ongoing interaction over the worst help that you find on the internet, especially in technology. Like where you will say, well, we're trying to fix this thing with our computer. And somebody will just say, "Throw it away and get a new one." Like, hey, thanks for taking the time to say that, right? We're trying to fix something. So the most unhelpful things.

Every once in a while you get a good one. Some of you know I've been— I try to take care of my own things at home. Like I changed the computer board in our dryer, our clothes dryer. And years ago, I found way deep in a forum on appliances one guy, man, this one guy in there. I don't know his name, but I wish I knew his name because this guy knew. He's like, "Okay, right here there's a spot on the circuit board that gets hot and it snaps the lead and all you got to do is solder a jumper on there and you don't need to buy these things." They were like $150, that board, and I had already bought one, right? So I bought one, but then I found this guy that knew how to fix it and he was right and I fixed it twice and he saved me $150. So that's how far you have to go, I'm suggesting, to get something good on the internet. You got to go 15 pages deep in a forum and find some good guy in there who offers a bit of good information.

So if you have to go that far, stay off the internet. That's essentially what I'm saying. That you're going to get out there and go wade through all this stuff. When it comes to health, when it comes to diet, when it comes to exercise, when one guy says do push-ups like this, another guy says if you do push-ups like that, you're going to die, right? One person says eat 42 eggs a month, and now this person says if you eat 3 eggs a month, you're going to die. This is the way the information is out there. And so with all that noise and confusion, what we don't want to do is add to the noise and confusion. We don't want to be another chirper out there. So please be careful with that, especially in the area of faith.

I would so much prefer you go next door and knock on your next-door neighbor's door and say, "I'd like to talk to you about my faith." Or your friend at work and say, "Hey, we're working, we see each other every day. Would there be a time where we could get coffee together and just talk about faith? I'd like to tell you what I believe. And you don't have to believe it, but let's have a conversation." Or like we heard at the dental office or those kind of things where you have an opportunity to just share your faith, or on an airplane. Wherever you're at, you get a chance. Hey, you're a human. I'm a human. Can I talk to you about what I believe as a Christian? No pressure. Not going to judge you. Not going to hate you. I'd just like to talk to you. Take away from the noise and actually have meaningful conversations is what I'm saying.

So again, when you try to oversimplify things, when you try to say, I'm going to do nothing, that's where you get in our notes here about the simple done wrong. And this connects with last week where I talked about one response to everything going on in our world is anti- intellectualism, the idea of saying, I don't want to— because there's so much to know out there that maybe what I need to do is back away from knowing everything and try to keep everything simple, right? And we know the gospel is simple, but the gospel is more than just the good news of Jesus. You have to know the theology. You have to know the doctrine. You have to know what the Bible means and what it teaches.

And so I have this verse here for both the positive and the negative. Mainly for the negative, the idea that knowledge puffs up. When Paul says that, We all have knowledge. Knowledge puffs up, but love edifies. That is not Paul saying don't be knowledgeable. He's saying don't be proud in your knowledge, right? That's what Paul is saying. And he goes on to say in that same verse, "And if anyone thinks that he knows anything, he knows nothing yet as he ought to know." So you might think you know stuff, but you're not knowing the right stuff. That's the redneck paraphrase of Paul, 1 Corinthians 8. You might know things, but you don't know the right things.

So the first thing I want to say is if you're tempted to disengage, if you're tempted to say, "I don't need to know things. I don't need to know everything. I don't need to know the deep things. What I'll do is when I do need to know something or I have a lack of understanding, I'll just do a quick bit of research to find it out, for a practical bit of research." And guess where most people go when they do that? Pastor AI. Pastor Google.

Now here's the thing you need to know if you didn't know already. I said it back a couple of weeks ago in the social media thing. But do you all know that all AI, ChatGPT, it's all artificial intelligence. All of it is. Okay? All of it's the same. That all it does is aggregate the internet and give it to you very, very quickly. It puts it in human terms. Did you know that? That that's what it is. The reason it's important that you know that that's what it is, is because the information that it gives you is only as good as the internet. Meaning it's not actual intelligence. AI is not a W, wisdom. It's just the aggregation of lots of information. It would be like you are a super duper speed reader and you could read all of the encyclopedias and have a quick ready answer from the encyclopedias that you could give somebody. But does that mean the encyclopedias are accurate? Does that mean that the encyclopedias are trustworthy?

So that when you Google something and you get an AI result, you're only getting information that's as good as the internet is. How's the internet doing these last few years? I don't know, did you go through anything about 5 years ago where the internet said all those crazy things about this crazy disease that was going to kill everybody? You remember that part of the internet that told you that? That told you if you just take this thing, you'll never ever get sick again? That told you— you were all there with me, right? None of you are less than 5 years old here. So how's the internet doing? How's the internet doing with truth and with reality?

So when you Google and when you think you're just going to cruise through life, "I'm not going to actually learn things. I don't need to know anything." That's what I mean by simple done wrong. "I'm going to stay simple. And if I need something, I'll just dip into the internet and get a good little answer and then I'll back out." Well, I'm telling you, you're only going to get information that's as good as the internet. And the internet is just full of a lot of people's opinions uploaded, people who wanted to be heard. And what kind of people want to be heard? I mean, other than weirdo preachers, right? What kind of people want their voice heard? Are they typically the wisest people or the people that want to be heard?

So when you Google, that's the people who are talking to you. Just please know that. You're getting the people that thought that they were important enough to put something on the internet for everybody to read. So please take that with you. Honestly, I would ask you to take that with you. And by the way, there's lots of good stuff out there. I've been finding really good stuff, especially in these last things with these series. Trying to get good theologians' and philosophers' information. So there's really good stuff on the internet, but like I said, you gotta dig deep to find it.

So, if we're biblically illiterate and we think that the answer is to go to the internet to get our biblical help, I'm telling you, be careful. Please be careful. I always say when people will ask me, "Have you read this book? Did you hear what so-and-so said?" It's almost always, "No." You just pretty much guess in advance that my answer is no. And you say, "Well, don't you need to know to stay abreast of what's going on in the world? Don't you need to be up to date on what's going on out there?" What's the title of the series? Nothing's New. They're just going to repackage the heresies. What I need to know is the truth. I need to know the Word rightly divided and then get good at handling that Word and using it as a lens to look at my world through so that when an error comes across my sight and becomes something I have to address, I don't have to go study 10,000 errors. I have the truth.

So your energy is way better spent studying the truth of God deeply, seriously, on your own, getting good commentaries, good theologians. Can I say it this way? Dead ones. The dead theologians, the old dead guys, those are the guys you should be reading. Not the newest hipster guy who has the fauxhawk and the tattoo of a Hebrew word on his arm. So be careful. Because new isn't always good. Back to the thing I said earlier. People want some new thing. And theology is an old thing. And we shouldn't need it to be new. We need it to be solid.

So don't try to be simple and think that all you need to do is dip into Christianity every once in a while with Pastor Google. You need to study.

Now here's the other thing. The pendulum is over here. I say, please be careful. Don't think that you can just be simple and not have to know things. It's dangerous to not— to not know things, and it's dangerous to trust Pastor Google. It's dangerous to only get a little bit of information here, there, and not deeply understand truth.

So what do some people do? They swing that pendulum all the way the other way and say, "Now I am going to be an expert theologian. I'm now going to know every detail. I will now understand every finite or infinite minute detail of every doctrinal supposition. I'm going to study the greatest theologians of all time. I'm going to study the debates of history." I'm going to study the creeds. I'm going to study the Puritans. I'm going to study the confessions. I'm going to get knee-deep in theology, and so that I'm going to spend all my time being an academic brilliant genius, and I'll spend zero time serving God or His people or sharing the gospel. I'm just going to be a genius. And if anybody will actually listen to me, they're going to be really impressed with me. I got news for you. Nobody's listening to you.

I've never once shared a Greek participle and saw someone get saved. I studied Greek for like 6 years, but never once have I shared the gospel in Greek. Not once. So that education is only good if you're using it to do the thing that God tells us to do, which is the Great Commission. So please be careful to think that all you need is lots of knowledge.

You say, well, Johnny, there's lots going on in the world, so I need to know all of it. And if I don't know all of it, I won't be able to address all of it. No, no, no, no. I'm telling you, you need to deeply, truly, seriously understand the truth of God's Word.

This morning, I don't want to name him because he might be embarrassed, but this morning I was having a conversation with somebody and they were having a conversation with somebody else and he was talking about Colossians. And when he talked about it, it was so refreshing to me to hear him talk about it when he was talking about it practically. Somebody in our church is struggling with something and he's talking about Colossians and he sees Colossians as the answer to the thing that they're dealing with. And he explains exactly how that passage in Colossians applies to their situation. And he was doing it with such fluidity, it was beautiful. Now, I didn't tell him that in the moment because we were around a lot of people and I didn't want him to feel awkward if I started bragging on him in front of people. I didn't want him to feel, you know, embarrassed. But it was amazing. I was thinking, that's how you do that. He's doing it just right. This is a guy that knows what the Scripture says. He sees his brother in need and he sees that the Scripture that he's studying addresses his brother's need. And then he properly applied that scripture. By the way, even connecting it to the first century asceticism that Colossians addresses. Like, it was beautiful. It was beautiful. It was masterful the way he did it. And by the way, he was just doing it pretty casually. Just how he sees the Bible correctly, and this is how you think of it, and this is how you use it.

That is what I'm talking about. He didn't learn Colossians so that he would know what it would be like to be in the first century and go to the city of Colossae and to see the Metropolitan and da-da-da-da-da. He didn't get stuck in Colossae. This is what Paul is writing to that church. That's how it applies to other Christians. So have you ever heard the old saying that people are so heavenly minded, they're no earthly good? I think it was Oliver Wendell Holmes that said that. They're so spiritual, but they're no good to anybody. Don't be that person.

So don't swing, say, "I don't want to be a simpleton who doesn't know anything," to "I will be the greatest theologian who ever lived and know everything," and not be able to actually communicate the simple truths of the gospel. So if you are anti-intellectual, you will eventually bring God down. Because God is high. He is lofty. He is awesome. And if you try to simplify the things of God too much, you will no doubt bring God down instead of exalting Him. And if you are hyper-intellectual, God just becomes a subject to study instead of a King and a Master and a person that you love.

So you want to walk that carefully in the world you live in. You definitely want to study things, but don't study to be an intellectual. Study because knowing God better through your study will make your worship more active. That you will worship more because you know more about him. So worship is intellectual and emotional. So that would be the benefit to being an academic.

So the long and the short of everything I'm trying to tell you is get good at handling scripture. How would you rate yourself? Like I just described for you, it done correctly, where somebody saw the— one of the 3.5 or 4 heresies of Colossians and the answer that Paul gave in the book of Colossians to address that heresy. And he saw somebody in our church who had a struggle and had a need, and he thought, "Hey, I see that this applies. This text applies to their situation. So I'm going to tell my brother, 'Hey, let me show you what Paul says to the Colossians, and it kind of relates to what you're going through.'" And he properly took that text, applied it in that situation, encouraged his brother That's discipleship at its most root level, where you're using the Word of God, you're studying it, and then you're using it. So I'm asking you, if I— I would call that a 10 out of 10. I would give him an A+ for that. How are you at handling Scripture?

With the problems of our world, think of the problems of your world right now. Think of Ukraine, think of Gaza, think of Iran. Again, I always— whenever I say those things, I know if we listen back to this in just 2 years, nobody's going to know what I'm talking about. Those things are going to go away, those news items, right? How good are you at taking what God has said in His word, understanding it correctly, then when the conversation happens with your friend or your neighbor about what's going on in the world, you can take God's word and apply it to that situation as a Christian. Or as a Christian to your brothers and sisters in the Lord. Instead of getting caught up with what's going on in the world, we huddle together and say, "Isn't this awesome what God says?" That we have the answer. That we don't have to get caught up in all that noise. That God has already settled these issues. That we know God wins, that we can walk in the Lord and have confidence.

So how good are you at understanding God's Word? How much respect do you have for God's book? I'll ask the hard one. I don't even want to ask this question, but I'm gonna ask it. What's the comparison of your time in God's Word in minutes compared to your time on your cell phone? How are you doing? Yeah, I don't want to answer it either. Fortunately, I have a I have a job that requires me to spend a lot of time in God's word. I have an unfair advantage. But I do ask you to think about it.

Minutes. All scripture, Paul says, is given by inspiration. That means breathed by God. Theopneustos is the Greek word. It's one word. It's a compound word. Breathed by God. God breathed the words of scripture. And it's profitable for doctrine. That means teaching, reproof. For correction, for instruction in righteousness. That the man, and woman, of God may complete, be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work. If I understand Paul correctly, the scripture is sufficient for us to know everything we need to do in our lives. And if Paul's right, then we don't need the internet for that. We don't need our favorite news organization for that. We don't need those things. Doesn't mean they're all bad. I'm not saying completely unplug, although I'd be happy if you did. But I am saying be careful to think that God needs the internet. When he gave us his book.

Dig into Scripture. Become a disciple. Discipline. It's right in the word disciple, a disciplined follower of the Lord Jesus Christ. So that if somebody cuts you, you bleed Scripture. I have the Bible so in me that if you talk to me, I can quote a passage that deals with that subject. Think about this week. Maybe test yourself this week. Test yourself. When something comes across your— comes to your attention, try to test yourself like an athlete would and say, "What passage applies to that? What passage applies to that? What scripture would I use to address that if I had to address that? How could I correct that thinking if I had to from scripture?" To get good— if the Bible's a sword— since we've got Cowboy here, do you guys remember the quickdraw cowboys that would be able to draw their guns? How good are you at drawing the sword? Quick-drawing the Word of God quickly. Like, I don't have to think about what my favorite Fox News guy says, or CNN person says, or internet person says. I know what Scripture— I know what Paul says. I know what John says. I know what Peter says. I know what David says.

Let's pray. Father, thank you for your Word. Even now, as we're talking about these things, it's a real blessing and major benefit to us that we have your Word. And I would ask, Father, that Instead of us relying on all the other noise or trying to completely disconnect, I would just ask that we would be biblical as a church and as individuals. Would you help us do that? Because we know your word is powerful, it's sharp, it's living, and it is the thing that can make the difference. The word of God is what changes hearts. And I'd ask, Father, that we would stick to it and trust you that you would deliver on bringing fruit from it. In Jesus' name, Amen.