A Good Servant

I'm imagining that every single one of you probably knows what a Rubik's Cube is. If you don't, here's a picture of one. This is a Rubik's Cube. And I saw this picture and saw the coins that were on top of the Rubik's Cube. And it's sitting on a piece of paper and all of that stuff. Now, I thought that's what I saw until I actually watched the video of which this was the first clip in the video. Take a look at the video, you can see it. Yep. Yep. Nope. Not what I thought. When I first looked at it, I was convinced that this was three dimensional that I was looking at when in fact it was two dimensional. And it kind of threw me for a loop when I saw that, and I was kind of like, "Oh, okay." This can actually happen to us in our lives spiritually. We can think that we are seeing the whole thing, but actually we're missing a dimension when we look at what we're looking at. And in fact, when Paul is instructing Timothy about how to conduct yourself in the household of God, and for the first few chapters where he's talking about bringing both unity and order into the context of the church where false teaching has run crazy. And now what Paul does in chapter four is he begins to make a little bit of a turn and starts to roll the curtain back just a little bit. And what we see is we see that there's another dimension that's at work here that we didn't maybe pick up on at the very outset. In other words, what Paul is going to tell Timothy is that, "Hey, all this stuff that you see going on, "this is one dimension of what you see, "but I want you to know "there's another dimension at work here. "The spirits are engaged in what's happening." That's what Paul is saying, that there are spirits that are engaged in what's happening with the false teaching that is running through the church. He's already told the church that it is the pillar and the foundation of the truth, but you can rest assured that the enemy wants to infiltrate the church, because it is the pillar and the foundation of the truth. And this isn't just spiritual. It doesn't just live in this kind of ethereal realm. It actually works itself out in the material realm. So Paul tells Timothy, "Here's how you can be a good servant of Christ Jesus. "You need to be paying attention to all of these things." And I'm gonna give you a couple that we're going to look at. And the first is this, is I believe that he's teaching him that he needs to recognize the deceptive spirits. Recognize the deceptive spirits. If you have your Bible, and I hope you do, I want you to stay in 1 Timothy 4, because we're gonna be just in a set of verses there, the first 10 verses. I hope that you'll track along with me and look in the context of your Bible. Whether you have a hard copy or whether you have a digital copy, I hope that you'll stay with me on this. But 1 Timothy 4:1 says this. It says, "The Spirit clearly says that in later times "some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits "and things taught by demons." Now, if you'll leave this up for just a moment, I wanna walk through this, what it talks about. First of all, it says, "The Spirit clearly says." Now, what is that referring to when the Scripture says that "the Spirit clearly says?" Oftentimes that's referring to something that has come before, some revelation that we have in the Word of God. But because we don't have that specifically, we don't know what Paul is referring to. I am of the mind that what's happening here is that the Spirit of God has given Paul a prophetic revelation of what is happening in the church at Ephesus. In other words, the Spirit has given Paul insight as to what's happening and what's going to happen. And he says this is going to be in the later times. Now, I don't know if that's the same exact terminology Paul uses in 2 Timothy 3, when he talks about the last days; he uses that phraseology in 2 Timothy. He says the last days, and here he says the later times. But whatever he's talking about here, he's talking about that time since the death and resurrection of Jesus until the coming of Jesus, that interval time period; some people refer to that as the last days. People say that often now, "Do you think we're living in the last days?" And I'll say, "Yeah, of course we are." It started after Jesus' ascension to the Father. After the death and burial and resurrection of Jesus and His ascension to the Father, bingo, that starts what we call the end of days or the last times. I don't know how close we are to the consummation of history and Jesus' return. I just know that we're closer today than we were yesterday. That I do know. We are closer today than we were yesterday. So Paul says that the Spirit has given him prophetic insight, "that in later times some will abandon the faith." Now that word abandon is where we get our word apostasy or apostatize. It means to abandon or to depart. We actually can get our word, the idea of we divorce ourselves from what? From "the faith." It doesn't just say from faith, it says from "the faith." This is talking about the faith that is once given to the saints, the faith that is handed down to us, the compendium of truth that we have, that we are to walk in and we are to abide by and we are to obey. He's talking about the faith. And he says, they've abandoned the faith, or they've apostatized from the faith "and follow deceiving spirits "and things that are taught by demons." That's a stark statement, isn't it? "They follow deceiving spirits "and things that are taught by demons." Now, this idea that they would abandon the faith is, we could read about that in a variety of different places in the New Testament, like Hebrews 3:12, which says this, "See to it, brothers and sisters, "that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart "that," here it is, "turns away from the living God." That's where we get our word apostasy or apostatized, the idea of the turning away. But the reminder is this. It's not about having salvation and then losing it. It's about being a professor of faith without being a possessor of faith. That there was inauthenticity in this from the very outset. That this wasn't about losing salvation, this was about really never having it. Participating in it, thinking and talking around those kinds of ideas, but never actually having been regenerated. Jesus warned us of this in the Sermon on the Mount and others that followed Jesus, the apostles warned us of the same things. In fact, later on, after this timeframe, you see Paul founded the church at Ephesus. Timothy was sent in to pastor the church of Ephesus. Do you know who came after Timothy? The Apostle John. Could you imagine the lineage of pastors in Ephesus? Paul, Timothy, John. And there was still a bit of a mess. That gives me some encouragement, I'll be honest. 'Cause sometimes when you think, "Oh man, am I getting through? "Am I really getting through to folks? "What is happening here?" And then I go back and I go, "Wait a minute. "Paul and Timothy and John all pastored in Ephesus "and they still had problems. "Whew." That's how you feel sometimes. Right? But do you know what the aged apostle John said when he was pastoring this church? Listen to what he said, 1 John 2. He said, "Dear children, this is the last hour; "and as you have heard that the antichrist is coming, "even now many antichrists have come. "This is how we know it's the last hour. "They went out from us, "but they did not really belong to us. "For if they had belonged to us, "they would have remained with us; "but their going showed that none of them belonged to us." You see, these were probably people that were infected with deceiving spirits and things taught by demons. These were people who had embraced this false teaching that ended up ultimately leaving the church at Ephesus, thankfully; ultimately ended up leaving the church church at Ephesus and demonstrating they were really never fully a part of the church, of God's regenerated people. You see, this is what the Holy Spirit was revealing to the Apostle Paul, giving him prophetic insight into what was going to transpire. And I think that what Paul is saying to Timothy is, you've gotta recognize the deceptive spirits. Because there's a few things that happen within that context that I would point out. The first is this is that there are deceptive people. There are deceptive people. Even though there are deceptive spirits or deceiving spirits and things taught by demons, this comes through the vessel of deceptive people. Look at verse number two, he says, "Such teachings." What teachings? Those things that are deceiving spirits and things taught by demons, "such teachings come through hypocritical liars, "whose consciences have been seared as with a hot iron." Now leave this up for just a second. Paul wastes no time talking about the vessels through which these deceiving spirits work their doctrine of demons, and they do it through, Paul uses the term "hypocritical liars." That's pretty stark, right? I mean, Paul's a pastor and he's writing to another pastor, Timothy, helping to lead a church, and he basically says that there are hypocritical liars that are among you. They're insincerity. In other words, they may be hiding that right now, but ultimately they will be revealed for the insincere people that they are. It's a remarkable statement. How in the world were they being hypocritical? Well, if you remember, and just leave this up here for a second, if you remember kind of the early gnosticism that had invaded this place, gave them a sense of some people could have special knowledge that other people couldn't have. And there was this divorcing of that which is spiritual and that which is physical or material. In other words, spiritual is good. The physical and stuff is not really good at all. Why? Because as we read in 2 Timothy, they'd already been preaching that the resurrection has already happened spiritually to everyone. And they've got this over-realized eschatology, I know that's a big word, but they've got this over-realized kind of theory of what has already transpired. And it became really, really messy. But the reason that they're hypocritical and they're lying is that even though they are feeding all of this kind of false teaching to people about the material being bad and the spiritual being good, they still were really, really, really in love with money, really in love with it. In fact, when you read through 1 Timothy, you hear constant teaching about correction around that idea. The women love to flaunt it, the men love to have it, yet somehow were bracing this idea that it was just all the spiritual things were good, but the material things were bad, but they were wanting to get rich. They were hypocritical and they were lying to people. I don't know if... Some of that happens today in maybe some similar realms and sometimes in different realms, but we have to be careful about that because Paul says that these are actually deceiving spirits. It's basically the teaching or the doctrine of demons that come through vessels that are hypocritical liars. In other words, these people were looking to gain a following for themselves and probably also amassing money as a result of that, even though they were talking about the spiritual being the only thing that matters and the material not being of any value. And it was all a crock. And then he says their "consciences have been seared as with a hot iron." Now, if you remember back in chapter one, when he talked about Timothy, he talked about having a good conscience that was based in faith. So you've got this interesting parallel. He says, it's a good conscious is what feeds our faith. But now you see the reverse. You see a conscience that is seared that actually causes them to abandon the faith. And the interesting thing about this phrase, the consciences that are seared, is that one commentator said that the construction in the Greek is what he will call the diabolical passive. You're going, "Wait, what?" The diabolical passive, which means this; Satan is the agent of the searing. He's the one who is initiating the searing of the conscience of those who are following the doctrine of deceptive spirits. He's the one who does that. Now, in the ancient world, searing was something that happened either with criminals or with slaves. It either denoted who someone was, they got seared with a brand, so to speak, kind of a fire brand to show who they were, or it was some symbol of ownership. The picture that Paul is painting here is that those who follow after deceiving spirits and things taught by demons is that Satan himself has given them a brand and marked them as his own. Think about that. And do you know what that mark is? Do you know what that brand is? It's a conscience that can no longer really tell the difference between truth and falsehood and that doesn't have a true moral conviction in accordance with the Word of God. That's what you see with a seared conscience. Now, my brothers and sisters, one of the things that we need to remember is this is that every single one of us is going to be serving the truth or serving falsehood; one or the other. And those that think that they are freeing themselves by saying, "You know what? "I don't really care about the truth. "You know, all this Bible stuff, whatever "I need to free myself from that so I can be free." Free? If by free you mean branded by the enemy of our soul such that he says, "You're mine," is that what you mean by free?" My brothers and my sisters, everybody serves somebody. Everybody serves somebody. And you have the opportunity to serve the truth of Jesus, or you serve the doctrine of demons and deceiving spirits. This is what Paul is revealing to us. So he talks about deceptive people. But he also talks about deceptive practices. Deceptive practices we can see in verse number three. Here's what it says. Here's what they do. These hypocritical liars, the ones whose consciousness are seared, "They forbid people to marry "and they order them to abstain from certain foods, "which God created to be received with thanksgiving "by those who believe and who know the truth." You see, in the early gnostic kind of thinking the spiritual and the material, where the spiritual's good and the material or the physical is bad, it led to them being ascetic in lifestyle. What that meant was that they did a bunch of things kind of to show their spirituality. They refrained from certain things. Maybe they took some ideas that were true to begin with and they began to rearrange those. But Paul says, "They're forbidding you to marry "and they're telling you "you have to abstain from certain foods." Paul's basically saying these are deceptive practices. They don't work. They don't work. In fact, Paul had to deal with this at the church of Colossae as well. This wasn't the only church he had to deal with this kind of stuff in. This kind of thinking was pervasive around Asia Minor and all of the known world around Paul in the Greco Roman world. This was kind of stuff he was having to deal with. And at the church of Colossae, he was having to deal with the same things. Listen to what he said in Colossians 2. He said, "Since you died with Christ "to the elemental spiritual forces of this world, "why, as though you still belonged to the world, "do you submit to its rules: 'Do not handle! "'Do not taste! Do not touch!'? "These rules, which have to do with things "that are all destined to perish with use, "are based on merely human commands and teachings. "Such regulations indeed have an appearance of wisdom, "with their self-imposed worship, "their false humility and their harsh treatment of the body, "but they lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence." Paul said, "You're not gonna get anywhere with this. "Even though you're trying to do all of these things, "you're not gonna get anywhere with this "because these are deceptive practices. "They actually don't have any power for your transformation. "That only comes by way of the Spirit." But then he talks about the distorted truth. The distorted truth. In verses four and five, here's what Paul notes to Timothy. "For everything God created is good, "and nothing is to be rejected "if it is received with thanksgiving, "because it is consecrated by the word of God and prayer." It's really interesting what Paul does here is he's reminding Timothy that bad behaviors come from bad beliefs. When you believe wrong, it leads you to behave wrong. And so what Paul's doing here is he's correcting the idea of these false teachers by helping them to understand some things. He's saying, "Well, why are you rejecting food? "Why are you doing that?" He didn't even go to the point of saying, "You know, Jesus said it's all good," 'cause He did say that. But he said, "God created all of this "and this is consecrated by the word of God." What is the word of God? Well, go all the way back to creation. When God made everything, what did He say? It is?

- Good.

- Good. It is consecrated by the very word of God and is also consecrated, this food, by our thanksgiving. You see, there's a reason where, and it's always brief, I don't try to catch up on my quiet time or my theology when I'm about to eat a meal. Some people enjoy doing that. "Dear God, as we come to this dinner, "I would like to exegete the Book of Galatians." Okay, cool. That's not what I do. What I do is I say, "Father, thank You for this. "We're grateful for it. "We know that You provided it." You know what we're doing? We are consecrating what we eat by our thankfulness in prayer. Because God said, "It is good "and I've given it to you to be able to enjoy." Now, obviously we have to use our minds. We're not gonna be able to eat a Twinkie and go, "God, would You make this a carrot and broccoli in my body?" We can't do that. Right? But we are thanking Him for what He has provided for us. And so Paul tells Timothy this craziness about telling people they have to abstain from foods and all of that. He said, "They think that they're spiritual in doing this. "They think this somehow makes them more spiritual." He said, "Not at all." God has consecrated food and has said, "It's good. "I've made it. "I've given it to you." You don't have to push away from it. Jesus said, "All things are clean for those who are mine." All things. So you can take this and you can do so because it's consecrated by God. And it is consecrated by our grateful prayers of thanksgiving. But do you know what Satan is constantly doing? Do you know what the doctrine of demons is constantly doing? It's usually trying to help us understand some distorted way of looking at the truth. In other words, just like in the very beginning, the enemy was trying to say, "Did God really say?" What he's trying to communicate to Adam and Eve is, "You know, God's not really good. "He's not really good. "You know better than Him. "You should be able to do these things. "He owes you certain things." And you hear that doctrine of demons coming out and he infiltrates the church even with that kind of stuff. Like the idea, for instance, that God owes you health and wealth. God doesn't owe you anything. You are the debtor. God is not in debt to you and I. He does not owe us health and wealth; that if somehow we will do X, then God will do. Nope. Read the New Testament for crying out loud. Somebody try and tell Paul that, beaten and left for dead, facing disease, being bit by spiders, can't see very well. Somebody tell Paul about this. Somebody tell Timothy. Paul could actually heal. He did that from time to time, but not every time. Do you know that he didn't even do that with Timothy? Timothy had a stomach issue. Paul told him, "Drink a little wine for your stomach." Why didn't he just say, "Come over here "'cause Jesus owes us all of this. "And so I will just touch your stomach." Nope, he said, "Drink a little wine for your stomach." Why? He told him to do that because that was actually more... The water sometimes was not so pure and so the wine actually was a little better for Timothy's stomach at that point. You see, we have to be careful that we get these ideas; the idea that, listen, the idea that God only shows His love to you by if you're healthy and wealthy. That is a doctrine of demons. That comes from a deceptive spirit. That is not the truth of the Word of God. 'Cause God loves us in the middle of our struggle. God loves us in the midst of our pain and suffering. God may use us even greater in the midst of our pain and suffering. Or the idea that kind of permeates in our particular culture and makes its way into the church, that somehow that we are better arbiters of our lives. We know better how to determine who we are and what reality is than God does. This is just deceptive spirits that are moving into the church. This is the same thing that the enemy was trying to get Adam and Eve to do. "You know better than God. "Like really, you could be like Him. "He just doesn't want you to know that. "He's holding out on you, "so this is what you should do." And now we embrace the same thing under different roots. We kind of have this idea that the self is the best to determine who we are and what is actually reality. And then we build these thoughts around it that we tell people, and we just spit out, because they're permeated in our culture and they start to infiltrate in the church. You're perfect just how you are. No, you are not. You are not. You are loved just like you are, but you are not perfect just like you are. You're a sinner who needs to be saved. All have sinned and come short of the glory of God, every one of us. So we're not perfect just the way we are. Why would we need Jesus if that were the case? We wouldn't, 'cause we're perfect just the way we are. We're not! We are loved in the midst of who we are, but we are loved that is pointing us to the great love that God has shown us in the sacrifice of His Son, dying for our sins, rising from the dead, conquering sin and death, satisfying His justice so that we didn't have to stand in that place so that we could be reconciled by faith in Jesus to the Father. This is the beautiful truth of the Gospel. But these things begin to infiltrate us. Or the idea that because I know better than anyone that I decide who I am, I decide what I am. Deceiving spirits. We have to be careful. Recognize the deceptive spirits. But then what does Paul tell Timothy that he should do in light of recognizing the deceptive spirits? He says this. Cooperate with the Holy Spirit. This is how we recognize the deceptive spirits is we cooperate with the Holy Spirit. You see, what Paul does in the very beginning of chapter four is he says, he starts with "the Spirit says." "The Spirit says." He's giving prophetic insight into what the Spirit has said. Because Paul is calling us to life in the Spirit, as opposed to the deception of the spirits. The demonic realm, the realm of Satan, he's calling us away from that and he's calling us into life in the Spirit. And so we cooperate with the Holy Spirit. Look at what verse number six says, the very beginning. It says, "If you point these things out "to the brothers and sisters, "you will be a good minister of Christ Jesus." Leave this up for just a second. When he says, "if you point these things out," point what things out? Point out the recognition of the deception of the spirits and the false teaching that is going on. You need to point those out. Why is that cooperating with the Spirit? Because that's what the Spirit does. That's what the Spirit does. The Spirit takes that which is false and shines the light of the Word of God on it so that we now see the error and we can see clearly the truth. And Paul says to Timothy, "If you point these things out to the brothers and sisters," that fundamentally what we're doing is we're cooperating with the Holy Spirit when we point these things out. He says, when you do that, "you will be a good minister of Christ Jesus." Now do not be confused here. When you see that word minister, you may be thinking, your mind maybe going around to paid professional kind of, like there's such a thing as a professional Christian. That's the weirdest thing I've ever heard in my life. There are some that are vocationally serving the church like I do, but I'm not a professional Christian. You're at some party or whatever and the host says, "Well, I guess we should say a blessing," and then they point to you and they're like, "We'll leave it to the professionals." I'm not a professional Christian. My vocational job is serving the church. But there's no professional Christians. Don't be confused by this because what that word is, "minister" is the word diakonos, we talked about that recently, it means servant. If you wanna be a good servant of Christ Jesus, then you'll cooperate with the Spirit by pointing these things out. Because remember, everyone serves someone. Everyone serves someone. And so we have to remember that what we're doing is we're pointing people to spiritual priorities in their lives. And that's exactly what he does here in cooperation with the Spirit. Let me show you the very first one; the nourishment of the Spirit. This should be a spiritual priority in our life. This is how we cooperate with the Spirit is the nourishment of the Spirit. Look at the full verse number six, it says, "If you point these things out "to the brothers and sisters, "you'll be a good minister of Christ Jesus, "nourished on the truths of the faith "and of the good teaching that you have followed." "Nourished on the truths of the faith "and of the good teaching that you have followed." That word "nourish" means to be brought up in like bringing up a child, that's the idea of nourishment. In other words, we are fed and we grow when the Spirit applies the truth of God's Word to our lives. And by the way, he didn't just say in that verse, he didn't just say that we're nourished on the truths of the faith. He says we're nourished on the truths of the faith and of the good teaching that you have followed. Do you know what that's indicative of? Obedience. The good teaching you have followed; not just that you've heard, not just that you've said you believed, but that you actually have obeyed. Do you know what the greatest teaching tool is to false teaching? Do you know what the greatest, kind of the greatest adversary to false teaching is? A life that is nourished on the Word of God and obeys it. That's the best teaching tool that you can find. That's, I believe, what Paul is trying to instruct Timothy in: the nourishment of the Spirit through the Word. If you do not faithfully spend time in the Word of God, you are malnourished. You need the diet of the Word of God more than just once a week. You need to feed yourself on the Word of God daily so that the Spirit of God uses that in your heart and in your life to conform you into the likeness of Jesus. Because that ultimately is where we are headed. We are headed to the likeness of Jesus. This is what God has given us as the resource. It is the sword of the Spirit. The Spirit is who nourishes our lives, who conforms us into the life of Jesus. And He does that through the agency of the truth of the Word of God. It's what informs and teaches our consciences so that they are good consciences that can discern truth from error. That comes by our understanding of the Word of God and being enriched by it; the nourishment of the Spirit. But secondly, the training of the Spirit is also how we cooperate with the Spirit. The training of the Spirit. Look at verses seven through nine, it says this, "Have nothing to do with godless myths and old wives' tales; "rather, train yourself to be godly. "For physical training is of some value, "but godliness has value for all things, "holding promise for both the present life "and the life to come. "This is a trustworthy saying "that deserves full acceptance." One commentator called this phrase that's used here when he says "have nothing to do with godless myths "and old wives' tales," he translated it stupid godless fictions. I liked that translation, I thought it was great. Stupid godless fictions. In other words, if you keep entertaining the constancy of speculative nonsense, you are going to continue to grow to be deceived. Instead, we should train ourselves for godliness. How do we do that? We train ourselves for godliness by loving and obeying the Word of God. We restrain the physical in some sense, and that can be okay. To restrain ourselves physically is okay. He says physical training is of some value. Some of us look at that and we go, "Is he talking about the gym?" Not really. He's actually talking about those ascetics who were trying to train their bodies to be spiritual by doing certain things, restraining themselves from these foods and that stuff. That's more what he's getting at. But what he reminds us of is that has some benefit, but ultimately godliness is what we're after. Here's why, because godliness matters in both dimensions. Physical training has value in the material dimension, but godliness has value for all things. It has value in both dimensions. And we have to train ourselves in that direction. I was thinking about this. Couple of people over the last few days, weeks that we've lost in our church, that I greatly love. Pastor Al, who was a pastor here at The Chapel. The Chapel's only had three pastors in its history: Pastor Andrews; Pastor Cockrell for a brief window; and then me. And you know what I remember? What I remember about Pastor Al is how much he loved the Word of God. Not just that he preached it, but we would just talk about it. We'd just grow in it. He loved it. Not just publicly, he loved the Word of God. I think about our buddy William who here at the CrossPoint campus sat right there, right there next to Twilight, right there, who just went to be with the Lord. He loved the Word. He got trained in it here through our teaching here that we would do. He loved the Word. And then I think about Ruth Carmer, who we just lost this week, this past week, just in her early nineties. She loved the Word. Her daughter Cathy is who runs every slide that comes up here. That's Cathy. Cathy, we just had the funeral service for Ruth on Friday and Cathy's back there now serving Jesus, running these slides after having just buried her mom. But you know what she knew? She knew her mom loved the Word. She even shared testimony of how her mom would go back into the archives and just listen to sermon after sermon after sermon after sermon. And she would hear the Word. And Cathy said her famous word was this: "Wow. "Wow." Just love the Word. Cathy loves the Word. I just thank God for people who train themselves by the Word of God. This is the training of the Spirit by yielding ourselves to the Word of God. Let me give you a third reminder here briefly. It's the energy of the Spirit. It's how we cooperate with the Spirit. Look at verse number 10. It says, "That is why we labor and strive, "because we have put our hope in the living God, "who is the Savior of all people, "and especially of those who believe." Labor and strive, what does that sound like? Energy. Listen very carefully. Godliness takes energy. Godliness takes energy. No one ever became godly by being lazy. No one. Godliness takes energy. So let me ask you a question. Where do you give your energy? Where does all of our energy go? It's limited. We have a limited amount of energy in our lives. Where does it all go? Sometimes if we start to evaluate, we would say it goes everywhere but to that which is making me godly. That we give our energy in so many places except that which is making us godly. You see, at the end of our lives, my brothers and sisters, how many dollars we made, how many widgets we sold, how many putts we sank, how many clothes we bought, how many followers we had on social media, none of it matters. What matters is that we gave our energy to the cooperation with the Spirit of being shaped by the Word of God, so that we might join God in His mission, because He loves every type of person in the world and wants them to come to know Him. That is ultimately what matters to God. And we have to evaluate. You're saying, "Man, should I just quit my job "and just read the Bible all day?" That's not what I'm saying. That's not what I'm saying. But I'm saying that if we are not prioritizing the energy that we have in our lives to give to be able to become godly, we are missing the purpose of that which we are destined for. And that is to be shaped into the image of Jesus and to join God in His mission so that every man, woman, and child might hear and see the Gospel. So summarizing this passage, you could just jot this down; a good servant of Jesus models, and points people to, life in the Spirit. That's what a good servant of Jesus does; models life in the Spirit and points people to life in the Spirit. So let me ask you this, is that what your life does? Is that what your life does? Are you being nourished in the Word of God? Are you growing in your obedience to the Word of God? Are you prioritizing energy for godliness and for the mission of God such that He can use you? This is how we avoid deceiving spirits. This is how we avoid the deception of those things that are taught, Paul says, by demons. We avoid it by cooperating with the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of truth. And we engage the authenticity of truth to be lived out to the glory of God. So ask God whether or not you are growing as a good servant of Christ Jesus, who is modeling and pointing people to life in the Spirit? Let's bow our heads together. In a moment, we'll be dismissed, but if you're here and you've never before entrusted your life to Jesus, let me say this to you. He loves you just like you are, but He doesn't wanna leave you like you are. He wants to save you. He wants to transform you, forgive you of your sins, bring you into fellowship with Him. The only way that comes is when we turn from our sin and we put our faith and our trust in Jesus alone as our Savior. And if you've never done that in your life, then I encourage you, when we dismiss in just a few moments, I wanna encourage you to just walk straight across the atrium here at the CrossPoint campus. Whether you're in this room or in the east worship center, just walk straight across the atrium. We've got some pastors and some other prayer partners in there who'd love to take a moment and pray with you about what it means to receive Jesus and to begin a relationship with Him. That is the most important thing that you will ever do in your whole life. That is the single most important thing. So I encourage you to do that. And if you're watching us online, http://thechapel.com/knowingJesus is a great way for you to be able to connect with us there. We would love to be able to do that. Father, I pray for each of us, I know that when we are taking in and receiving Your Word, I pray that we would be a people that do so eagerly, that we welcome Your Word to our hearts, but that we are not just hearers only, but we are doers of the Word. Father, I pray for those who may, who may know in their hearts that they need to be nourished on the Word of God, but really have a diet of about one meal a week, and it's today. I pray that You would help them by Your Spirit to feed on Your Word and to embrace the obedience to Your Word. I pray that You'd give us a clarity of mind so that we would not be caught up in constant speculative nonsense that leads us further and further away from the clarity of the truth of the Word, but that we would be a people who constantly link our lives to the Word of God and walk in the fullness of the Spirit. I pray that we would leave a legacy for people that see our lives, and that they would know us to be people of godliness, to be people of truth, to be people of love and humility and grace, that they would see the life of Jesus in us, because we believe the truth of the Word of God, that our actions accompany that and people see a beautiful, winsome, compelling witness for Jesus. 'Cause that's what our world needs to see, the clarity between that which is false and fleeting and that which is true. So I pray You'd purify our hearts, You'd purify Your church for Your glory, and that we would be good servants of You, Christ Jesus, as we point people to life in the Spirit and as we model life in the Spirit so that men, women, boys, and girls might hear and see the beauty of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We pray now in Christ's name. Amen.