Children of God: Knowing And Loving The True Jesus - Andrew Bennett

Hey guys, Pastor James Murray here, and I want to welcome you to the Abide Sydney podcast. This whole podcast is designed to help you on the journey of discipleship, and our mission is to make disciples of the people of Sydney. But maybe not from Sydney, we hope this blesses you, so sit back, relax and enjoy this podcast. 1 John chapter 4 verses 1 to 6. Dear friends, I love that. Dear friends, you'll notice and you would have noticed throughout the book of 1 John that John speaks with such affection to his people, and that's a message in itself. Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, test the spirits, say test the spirits. Strange thing to say, test the spirits, to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. This is how you can recognize the spirit of God. Every spirit that acknowledges Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the Antichrist which you have heard is coming and even now is already in the world. You, dear children, are from God and have overcome them, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world. They are from the world and therefore speak from the viewpoint of the world and the world listens to them. We are from God, and whoever knows God listens to us, but whoever is not from God does not listen to us. This is how we recognize the spirit of truth and the spirit of falsehood. We're going to unpack that this morning. Let's just pray as we come around the Word of God. Thank you, Jesus. Just join me in praying. Thank you, Father, for your Word. Jesus, we thank you for who you are, who you've shown yourself to be through your work on the cross and who you show yourself to be in our lives every single day. We open up our hearts to you. We pray that you teach us, build us, strengthen us, reshape us, bring us to life by your Word. In Jesus' name and everybody said, Amen. Go ahead and take a seat. Tell the person next to you that you love them. Would you just join me in thanking Josh and the worship team. Thank you, guys. Thank you, Joel. The whole team, you're a blessing. Thank you, Dean. We had a guest, drummer this morning. You did a great job. Thanks, Dean. Question for you. Who remembers the 2004 movie, The Stepford Wives? Anybody? It was a remake of a '70s classic, The Stepford Wives. It was a movie where men do some silly things. Men replace their actual wives with eerily perfect robotic replicas. They looked good. They did whatever you told them. They didn't argue, didn't disagree. It told you what you wanted to hear. Some of you, I guess sounds awesome. One problem. Their counterfeits. They're not the real thing. They can give you everything you want in a marriage except the one thing marriage is about actual loving connection. And John is actually saying, he's saying we can do the same thing with God. We can replace the real God with a counterfeit version of our own making. We can replace him with something that uses Christian language, talks about God, sounds deeply spiritual, can be impressive, can appeal to some desires that we have, but it actually disconnects us from the real Jesus. There's no love. There's no real life in it. The Stepford Wives, they could give you everything you wanted except what marriage is about, and that's a love that changes you. And that brings us an account of it gospel, account of it gospel. These false spirits, these false teachings might give you something that you want. They might offer you something that you want except for a relationship with God that is really about a love that transforms you from the inside out. And that brings us to our text. What is John doing in these first six verses of one John chapter 4? He is shoring up his people against deceptive lies that are coming at them in their day. There were counterfeit gospels, false teachings that were circulating. There were deceptive lies circulating in his day, seducing people out of true relationship with the true God. But you know what? It's actually the same in our day. We live in a media saturated content overloaded world. It's pouring to us through our computers, our devices, our screens, every single possible avenue. There's just more content than you can get to, right? So many voices. Same in our day. There are just so many deceptive teachings that can lead people into error. Does anyone have friends and family that used to be sitting alongside them in church and are no longer sitting with them today? I do. And it breaks my heart. They're not here anymore, not because they're bad people, but because they were lured away by a compelling idea that sounded right at the time. But you know what? This has actually been the devil's strategy since the very beginning, deception that liars us away from relationship with the true God, from the very beginning, to trick us out of connection, real connection with the real God. He knows that life and salvation is only found in real relationship with the real God. So, and he doesn't, he doesn't really doesn't mind how he disconnects us from that, as long as he does. C.S. Lewis says, you know, it's an Andy message when you're straight into C.S. Lewis from like before you even get the point one. Here we go. C.S. Lewis, I love this quote. It says it makes no difference to a dying man in a desert by which path he missed the only well. It will not matter to you whether you have missed the kingdom of God because you were tied to a woman or because you were tied to a science or a cabinet career. If there's only one well of living water and I'm your enemy, you know, the best way I could stop you from getting to that well of living water is putting a bunch of other wells as many other wells as possible around it so you can't tell which one is the real one. That is the thing. If you were to replace my wife with a counterfeit wife, I'd figure it out in about two seconds. I might let the counterfeit hang around for a couple of weeks. Just kidding. No, I wouldn't. She does a good job. No. But you know why I'd notice it so quickly? Because I know her. I know I rena. I love her. I have real relationship with her. But if someone brought you a counterfeit gospel, I wonder if you'd recognize it. You would think you'd just go, I would recognize it. I don't know if it's gospel, but you know who didn't recognize it when it came their way? Adam and Eve. They were in the perfect environment. They were in the garden of Eden, paradise, perfect, well, unbroken fellowship with God. They walked with God in the cool of the day, heaven and earth overlapping, but they were deceived out of it. That makes me go, wow, would I recognize it? You know what depends on? Here's what it depends on. How close are you and how well do you know the true Jesus and the true gospel? How close to you are him? How close are you to him? The title today is one of the major themes in one John is knowing and loving the true Jesus revealed in the true gospel. My hope for you today is that you would know him, love him and trust him so deeply that no counterfeit could ever lure you away. That you'd be so close to him that you're safe in his embrace no matter what lies come your way. We're going to look at it under two headings, simply recognizing your counterfeit gospel and recognizing the true gospel. The counterfeit gospel and the true gospel, what they say about God and what they produce in their followers. You're ready to go church. I hope just like what Apostle John was doing in his church. I hope this shows you up and helps your roots grow deeper and deeper in Jesus. So you grow strong in the truth that you've been taught and you're unshakable in this life. Amen. Point number one, recognizing your counterfeit gospel. It says test the spirits. It doesn't mean go down to your local distillery and just get flight after flight. Test the spirits. It's not just preachers and teachers. It's the spirits they are speaking for. Any time someone's up and they're prophesying or they're speaking or they're teaching, it's not just their own ideas. There is something speaking through them. John's start has written a great commentary on one John and he says this. He says every prophet is the mouthpiece or spokesman of some spirit. True prophets of the Spirit of God. Remember what Jesus called the Spirit of God, the Spirit of truth. And false prophets of the Spirit of falsehood, of the Antichrist. Antichrist means he's not, John is not talking about at one single individual when he talked about that Antichrist spirit. He's talking about any spirit that opposes the work of God in our day and the people of God, and that spirit is already in the world, he's saying. So behind every prophet is a spirit and behind each spirit is either God or the devil. Before we can trust any spirits, we must test them. It is their origin that matters. There is need for Christian discernment. Say discernment, discernment, John was trying to build discernment in his listeners. I'm trying to build discernment in our congregation so that you are short up against whatever comes your way. For many are too gullible and exhibit a naive readiness to credit messages and teachings which purport to come from the spirit world. There is such a thing as misguided tolerance. Say misguided tolerance. I think that is an important word in our generation. Misguided tolerance. There is such a thing as misguided tolerance of false doctrine. Unbelief, do not believe every spirit, can be as much a mark of spiritual maturity as belief. We should avoid both extremes. The superstition which believes everything and suspicion which believes nothing. Wow. Don't believe everything you hear. It's part of what John is saying. And how he says to test it. How do we test it? He says it's about the content of the teaching and about the character of its audience. Content of the teaching, character of its audience. It's about what it says about Jesus and about who listens to it. He says this is how you can recognize the spirit of God. Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God. He was getting it. It was a rebuttal to what one of the lies of his days were. It was the no sticks that said Jesus Christ did not, that the divine Christ actually joined Jesus at his baptism and left him at his crucifixion. So he didn't become fully human. So he's saying every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the Antichrist which you've heard is coming as already in the world. So he says about the content of the teaching and the character of its audience. Does the church embrace this teaching? Does the whole church embrace this teaching? Or is it a minority? I remember in the early 2000s there was a kind of a popular movement called the New Atheists. I don't know if anyone remembers that. There were some books around it and a whole I can know about a dozen of my friends that that exited not just our church but Christianity on the wave of that teaching and the vast majority of the church didn't accept it and that should have been one of the signs that it wasn't truth. John chapter 10, same author, Apostle John, he has Jesus saying in John 10 he says the sheep know the voice of the shepherd. One sheep vulnerable but when you're together with the body you are much safer. It doesn't say you have the mind of Christ. It says we have the mind of Christ. Together we can discern the voice of the shepherd. Every one of us at one day in our lives is going to be open to error and going off track. We need each other. We're not just trying to boost numbers when we say to get into connect groups. Christianity cannot be lived as a solo thing. It's number one commandment. It's love one another. A garpe love one another. You can't do that unless you're deeply connected to each other. You're like where do I start? Connect group. Start there. Connect group actually it's so intimate. You get invited into somebody's home. That's massively intimate. It's hard to just start a garpeying one another in the foyer. You can start but it's about when you get into relationship with one another. That is so much about learning to hear the voice of the shepherd. If it's not all of what he does it's a huge amount of what he does comes to us through our brothers and sisters. It's hugely important. A few truths you need to know about your enemy, the devil. I'm actually borrowing this from Pastor James's message a couple of weeks ago because it was brilliant. A few truths you need to know. The devil is a real and intelligent enemy who stands opposed to God and his people. His aim number two is to distort the truth. Divide God's people and destroy lives. His preferred weapon number three is not power. It's deception. So these counterfeit gospels, these false teachings that come into the world, they're not just hip ideas, they're not just a product of our times. They are deceptive, lies, designed and sent out into the world to deceive. To keep people from that one living well. So what we're going to do, we're going to look at seven popular counterfeit gospels, false teachings that are in the world right now in our day and look at what the gospel has to say about them. Most deception doesn't look completely unlike Christianity. It looks almost like Christianity. Some even call themselves Christians. Irene and I worked in a church in Salt Lake City Utah for about three months, like the Mormon capital of the world, in Salt Lake City 80% of the population is Mormon. As you go further out into the city it goes up to like 95% Mormon and a lot of them actually call themselves Christians and in their doctrine and teaching they say that they're Christians, but when you find out the content of their teaching, character of their audience you realize it's actually not the gospel. So but they can look like Christianity on the surface. It takes something true and exaggerates it or diminishes it or adds something to it or leaves something essential out. So you're ready to have a look at these. Here we go. Again some of them you would have seen maybe a couple of weeks ago. Some of them you haven't. This is something new that you'll see. All right. The first seven distortions of the gospel. The first one, universalism, hugely popular at the moment. The belief everyone will ultimately be saved regardless of faith in Christ. Why it's so deceptive, it magnifies God's love while diminishing his holiness, justice and the necessity of repentance and faith in Jesus. Those scriptures there John 146 Jesus saying I am the way the truth and the life no one comes to the Father except through me. So it's an inclusive message in that it's open to everybody. It's an exclusive message in that there's only one doorway into fellowship with the real God. Acts 412. There is no other name given unto men by which we may be saved. If there was another name it would work but there is only one. Universalism. The second one, the prosperity gospel. The belief is God's primary will is your health, your wealth and success. Remember that TV show Healthy, Wealthy and Wise? And that faith guarantees material blessings. I've been in environments where people's faith is measured by their material blessing. And if someone is not at a certain level of financial prosperity they just sort of look down on. It must be that they don't have great faith. I wonder how they would have looked at some of the apostles I don't know. But they say that that is God's primary will. Why it's so deceptive? It offers Jesus as the way to get the treasure when Jesus is the treasure. I've had people in churches like this that have said to me, they've said I would give and then I would get more. And so it's not like an imaginary thing. A close friend of mine says Andy we were just getting so blessed. I started saying there's so many other things that I want so I'm going to give more. And eventually he gave so much and not saying it was wrong to give that amount but his motive was wrong. And his business then started tanking. And he found himself lost the job, lost the house. Everything went wrong but you know what it was the best thing for him. Now he recognized the error of his ways and he said now I give because I want the kingdom of heaven to come and he's doing the slow rebuild. Absolutely worth it. Why it's sort of deceptive? The pearl of great price worth giving else everything else away to possess. Amen. Next one. Progressive Christianity. The belief. Biblical teachings should be reshaped to fit modern cultural values and ethics. Massive. Especially around relationships. Sexuality. Why it's deceptive. It elevates current cultural values over scripture. When Jesus Christ is Lord and Saviour for every culture and every age. I think it was GK Chesterton that wrote, "If something is true at lunchtime it doesn't stop being true at 330. in the afternoon. If something was true in that day, it's still true for humanity today. Anti-nominism, big word means anti-lawlessness. The belief, it basically, it throws off God's moral standard is what anti-nominism is. Cheap grace. The belief, because God forgives repentance and obedience and holiness are unnecessary or optional. Why it's so deceptive is it separates God's grace from his transforming power. As though Jesus came only to forgive our sin, not free us from it. What I find with this one is people don't realize they're slipping into it and they may just get into a stage where they're just presuming on the grace of God and just going, "Oh, no, God's going to forgive me of this, so I'm just going to go ahead and do it anyway," and then tell themselves they were repent later. Every time we do that our heart gets harder and harder and harder towards God, see us Lewis writes, "At first they will not, in the end they cannot turn back. Beware of hardening our heart, beware of presuming on God's grace. His grace is a transforming power." I remember when I became a Christian, I became a Christian fearfully and knowing that I was unable to live up to God's standard. But what I didn't know was what it felt like when God's spirit came in and lived inside me and then I realized I had new desires to please Him and I had a whole new motor, a whole new engine, a whole new moral presence in my life that gave me the power and the reason to live differently. It's the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit's in you, you'd be compelled to please the Lord in our actions. Fifth one, syncretism, big word, kind of simple thing though. The belief, Christianity can be blended with other spiritual practices, philosophies or belief systems. Example, astrology, crystals, new age, spirituality, mixed with Christian language. This is a big one in our day because it allows you to agree with everybody. Why it's effective? It offers agreement with others and spiritual experiences while subtly replacing dependence on Christ with alternative sources of guidance and power. It lets me agree with the person at the work party and just say, "Yeah, that's totally cool, you do you, Bibu." I'm not saying that you've got to correct everybody in every moment, but you can disagree with somebody and still love them. You can disagree with somebody and still be kind and polite, but to agree with somebody ushers them away from the only well of living water and does not help them find a bridge to it. It just says, "Yeah, no, you can have a drink from all the other wells. Some of those wells may taste good." It might be like, "That's coconut sugar, that's all right, but it's not going to bring them to life. It's not going to give them fulfillment and life that only comes with connection from Christ." Amen. So you can lovingly disagree and that way you're always holding out an opportunity to someone that they know. Do you know when someone sees you disagree but still show love, that's a huge point in your favour. Huge, you might, they may go away, maybe not liking you, but they'll be a respect there, they'll come back. They may come back, they may not come back. That doesn't mean I'm not going to stand by the tree well. Number six, deconstruction without reconstruction, big one in our generation, obviously. The belief, all traditional Christian beliefs should be questioned without returning to biblical truth. We've seen people just overthrow things because they're simply for the reason that they're traditional and old. If something's traditional and old, maybe it's worth actually looking at what it is, why it stood the test of time. Sure, question it, but not without finding something solid in its place. Why is deceptive? Questioning can feel like intellectual honesty, but if we only tear down and never seek what is true, we're left with nothing solid to stand on. CS Lewis has a great quote along these lines. He says, "You cannot go on seeing through things forever." The whole point of seeing through something is to see something through it. A wholly transparent world is an invisible world. To see through all things is the same as not to see. And GK Chesterton, absolute belter, is anyone a GK Chesterton fan? This guy is the funniest, most brilliant, most searingly powerful writer, lived like 100 plus years ago. This is what he wrote about the idea of just overthrowing things and let's just try something else, try something new. The object of opening the mind as of opening the mouth is to shut it again on something solid. I love that. Isn't that good? He actually says he goes on and sort of talks about some of the foolish things that we're like so open-minded, our brains are falling out. He says if someone's mind is open on such things, let their mouth at least be shut. That's hilarious. And last one, if you grew up in church like me, you may have heard some version of this, the reduced gospel, the belief. The main hope of the gospel is that our souls go to heaven when we die. Is that part of the gospel? Sure, is it the whole thing? No, it's not the whole thing. Why it's deceptive? It offers consolation and escape from the physical world, but reduces the gospel by missing its ultimate hope, the renewal of creation, resurrection, restoration and God dwelling with us. You know, the sinister genius of the Stapford wives was they don't just get rid of their wives altogether, they replace them with counterfeits designed around something that appeals to them, something that appeals to their desires. They keep what they like and they remove what challenges them. And that is a huge part of what the counterfeit gospel tries to do. We don't just reject God, we accept a new version of Him that exists to serve Me. It's a God who sounds more appealing, more current, more liberal, more moral. Maybe more moral. He lets me tick a bunch of boxes, and if I do this, do this, do this, then I can feel better about myself. A God who fits neatly into my work life, social life, love life. A God who makes me feel better about my old self rather than allowing the true gospel to reveal the true God and that puts the old self to death, brings new life and reshapes me into a child of God. Allowing the true gospel to say what it says. Some things that the true gospel says are hard to take. It's hard to swallow. As Tim Keller says, the gospel on one hand tells you that you are so sinful that it took nothing less than the death of the Son of God to save you, but you are so loved and so precious to Him that he was glad to do it. So it sees me as I really am on both axes. The true gospel may start off as like, that's hard to hear. John the Baptist message, kind of hard to hear. Repent, brood of vipers. But unless I hear that, why am I turning to the Savior? So allowing the true gospel to say what it really is, I want to know the true God. I don't want to be married to a robot. I want a real person. I don't want to be spiritually united to something of my own construction that actually just leads me into selfish deception. I want to know the true God. I want to drink the living water from the true world and I want to spend eternity with Him in His renewed world. Amen. Point number two, recognizing the true gospel. Again, it's the content of the teaching, the character of the audience, the content of the teaching. John says this. He says every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God. That was His defining test. Acknowledging that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh. Why did He put it in that little sentence? There's, because it seems like, it might at first sound just like a bit of a throwaway line. It's like, okay, it's something, it's like I would see that on a Christmas card or something. But there's more in this statement than we realize at first. It's actually the perfect little capsule of the whole gospel message. And it's a direct rebuttal to the nostics, the main lie of their time. What I want to show us today is that this actually opens up the origin, the purpose, and the method of God's salvation. The origin, the purpose, and the method of salvation is all contained in that truth. And that's how John is saying, this is how you know if it's the real spirit speaking the real gospel. Firstly, the origin of salvation, Jesus Christ has come in the flesh. He's come in the flesh. Why would he say he's come? It doesn't just say that he was born. He was born, but not, he wasn't just born. He came. He was somewhere else, and then he became a human and came and lived a life on earth. He was the one true God. Remember, John, the very beginning of the letter, he says, that which was from the beginning has come into the world. That which was from the beginning, we have seen, we have heard, we have touched, we have had fellowship with, the true God, the one that said, let there be light, has put on a human body and come into the world. He became, he was the one true God and it says he has come in the flesh. He became fully human. There was another thing that the Nostics denied. They said, you know, as I said, the divine Christ came and rested on the man Jesus at baptism and left him before he died on the cross. But John is saying here, he's saying that he became fully human. God became man. And that is how humanity can be reunited to God. Humanity was separated from God and he's like, I'll do anything to get them back. I'm going in, I'm becoming one of them. He united himself to humanity so that humanity could be reunited back to God. That's a doctrine of the incarnation, which obviously we celebrate at Christmas time, we celebrate every, we celebrate all the time, but Christmas is around that particular thing. The true gospel proclaims Jesus is God, not just the man. That's part of how you can tell, that's the content of the message. Jesus is God, not just the man. That's the origin of salvation, the purpose of salvation. Jesus Christ has come in the flesh. Why would he put it like that? He's become a human being. He's joined himself as part of his material world. Well, other religions will show, will try to say that the purpose of salvation is to liberate you from the flesh, to escape it. Some religions will say the physical world, that some Eastern religions will say the physical world is an illusion, and you can try to escape it. Remember the matrix? There is no spoon. Like you're trying to sort of live beyond the importance of this physical world. And other religions, more Western religions will say, yeah, it's a real physical world, but you can escape this cruel world and go to heaven where everything's fine. Sort of live in this fantasy of like, yeah, they're in a better place now and just sort of tell himself that we try and escape this world. But Christianity says this, that at the birth of Jesus, God received the body, and at the resurrection of Jesus, we see that the salvation of God is not to escape the flesh, but to redeem it. Because He rose from the dead in a physical body. It's not to escape this world, but to redeem and renew this physical world. We only do away with death, disease, pain, loss, poverty, injustice, to heal everything that's broken with this world. That's the teaching of the Christian gospel. That's what the resurrection of Jesus shows. Sri Lankan Theologian, Vinoth Ramachandra says this. He says, Christian salvation lies not in an escape from this world, but in the transformation of this world. You will not find hope for this physical world in any other religious system or philosophy. The biblical vision is unique. That is why if someone says, surely there is salvation in other faiths, I ask them, what salvation are you talking about? Not this salvation. No faith holds out a promise of eternal salvation for the world, like the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ do. So good. The origin of salvation, the purpose of salvation to renew the whole world and humanity along with it. The method of salvation. Other religions will say, if you want to be saved, you have to perform the truth. Live to this standard. Love God, love other people, love your family, love your neighbor. If you do that well enough, God will see that. He'll bless you and save you and take you to heaven. But that's not the message of the Christian gospel. John 14, the same chapter we're reading from, it says, this is love. Not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Thank God for that. How many people are glad that my salvation doesn't depend on my ability to perform obedience. Thank God. He came primarily not as a teacher to tell us how we should live, so that if we lived that way, we can be saved. But primarily, hang on first. Was he a teacher? Greatest of all time. Was that his primary mission? No. He was a great, he was the greatest teacher, but he was the only Savior. He came as a Savior who lives the life we should have lived and died the death we should have died in our place. That's what he came to do. So salvation isn't a reward for people who have loved God well enough. It's amazing grace for people who haven't. Thank God for that. And lastly, so that's the origin, the purpose, and the method of salvation. That's the content of the message. And what it produces, just finally, what it produces. When I realize that, when that becomes the center of my life, it changes how we live. Look at the next three verses. It says, "Dear friends, let us love one another for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God." Remember that word love? It's not just romantic feelings. It's not just warm fuzzy feelings. It's a garpe love. It's love that expresses itself in actions for other people's benefit, even if it costs me. People who do that, that love only comes from one place. All other earthly loves are transactional. Love of God is one way. It's to bless. No strings attached. I care for you. I want to bless you. This, it says, "Whoever does not love does not know God because God is love." This is how God showed his love among us. He sent his one and only son into the world that we might live through him. Verse 10, "This is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and set his son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins." When I see the all-powerful God having compassion on broken humanity, when I see, like Ward says in his beautiful communion message this morning, that he gave himself for me, that he was the ultimate man. He was tortured. He was brutally abused. And when he was killed, he, as he was dying, is interceding for those that are mistreating him. When I see the love that he showed us in Christ, that absolutely changes my heart. When the Holy Spirit comes and reveals that to you, it reshapes you into a whole different person. When I realize it was my sin that put him there, yet he did that for me. That melts my heart into a whole different shape. This is how we know what love is. Christ laid down his life for us. We ought to lay down our lives for our brothers. When I see the compassion, love, mercy of God, it becomes a motor, an engine, a motorvader in my life to want to reflect that, want to bring that into the world. When the cross has reshaped our heart, we start to live cross-shaped lives. His love reshapes us into people who can be agents of peace and reconciliation into the world, because that's what he's showed us. Amen? We're wrapping up. What do we see in those two gospels? The counterfeit gospel and the true gospel. Here's what we see. They reveal things about the character of God, where they proclaim things about the character of God, who is at the centre and the fruit it produces in its followers. The counterfeit gospel. What does it say about the character of God? It says that he can't be trusted. He's holding out on you. What does the serpent first say to Adam and Eve? To God really say you can't eat the fruit? You know what? He's just holding out on you. God knows that if you eat of the tree, you'll be like him, and he doesn't want you to have that. He's saying you can't trust God to deliver the full human experience. He's saying the character of God can't be trusted, so you've got to reach out and take it for yourself. Who does that put at the centre? Us, me. What fruit does that produce in its followers? Insecurity, fear, selfishness, envy, striving, meanness to others. I'll stomp on other people to get ahead. The true gospel, on the other hand, what does it reveal about the character of God? He can be trusted. He gave himself for me. Look at that scripture. He loved us and set his son as an attaining sacrifice for our sins. The character of God, if you ever get insecure about how God feels to you towards you, look at what Jesus did for you on the cross. If he would do that for you, if he would go to that length to reach out to you, to remove the barriers between you and him, to set you free from the things that bind you. If he would do that for you, you can trust him. In fact, there's actually nobody else that you can trust, the way you can trust Jesus Christ. Nobody has ever loved you like that. Nobody ever will love you like that. There's no one in the world that cares for you like that. You can trust your most intimate things. to that good shepherd that would lay down his life for you. He's actually the only one that you can entrust your whole heart to. Who is at the center of that? Jesus Christ is at the center of that. His love shown to us on the cross is the most beautiful thing that this universe has ever seen. We'll ever see. Book of Revelation, what is it that's on the throne and the center of the throne? The lamb that was slain for the atonement of the sins of the world. There is nothing more glorious, nothing more beautiful. He is at the center when someone's preaching the true gospel and the fruit it produces. When I see that gratitude, so I throw up my hands, praise you, there's no other response, humility. That was my sin that put in there. But it was his sacrificial love that brought me to himself and saved me. And out of that comes obedience. I see Jesus obedience and I'm like, Jesus, help me follow and honor. I have only Father like you did. Amen. The best protection against the counterfeit isn't knowing every single counterfeit. It's knowing the real thing. No Jesus, love Jesus. Stay so close to Him that another, when another voice calls, you know that's not my shepherd. Let's stand as we respond. It's a couple of reflection questions that you can think about now and even this week if you want to take a photo. How well do I actually know Jesus? Not just know about Him, but how well do I know Him? I start most days off with a Psalm. Just go through all the Psalms one at a time. But the last two weeks I've been stuck on Psalm 23 because I'm just, I can't look away from who it reveals the shepherd to be. And I just find new things and I'm just drawing closer to Him through that Psalm every single day. How well do you know Jesus? Are you getting to know Him more? Not just know about Him. Where am I tempted to believe that God is holding out on me? Is there something that you're trying to surrender to your Heavenly Father? Can I just encourage you if you're in that place, just keep looking at Jesus and look at how much He loves you and what He's done for you? Until you can see that you can absolutely trust Him. He only wants to set you free from the things that bind you. Third question, is this gospel I'm believing making my life look more like Jesus and His self giving love? What fruit is it producing in our lives? So we can go to the next screen and this is just a prayer that we're going to pray together, just to respond to what the Holy Spirit spoke in this morning. Do you know, we're going to read this. Actually, I'll just read it and I'll say this afterwards, but it says, Jesus, I want to know you more to see you clearly, love you deeply and trust you completely. Draw me so close to you that no counterfeit could ever lure me away through the power of your Spirit, reshape my life by your self giving love. So let's pray that together. Let's invite you to join us and we pray this is a prayer of response together. Say, Jesus, I want to know you more, to see you clearly, love you deeply and trust you completely. Draw me so close to you that no counterfeit could ever lure me away through the power of your Spirit, reshape my life by your self giving love in Jesus name. Well, we hope this podcast has inspired you on your journey of discipleship to Jesus. If you want to know more about our church, just go to abide.cidney. We'd love to get to know you. If not, you're from another place. Hey, why don't you share this with someone else and hopefully it helps them as they continue to follow Jesus. Have a great week.