I want to invite you to turn in your Bibles, please, to 2 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians chapter 11. We're going to be beginning at verse 1 in that chapter today. There is a copy of the text printed in your bulletin on the sermon notes from the translation from which I will read. We're going to read 2 Corinthians chapter 11, verses 1 through 15. Let's give our attention to the reading of God's Word. I wish you would bear with me in a little foolishness. Do bear with me, for I feel a divine jealousy for you, since I betrothed you to one husband to present you as a pure virgin to Christ. But I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ. For if someone comes and proclaims another Jesus than the one we proclaimed, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or if you accept a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it readily enough. Indeed, I consider that I am not the least inferior to these super-apostles. Even if I am unskilled in speaking, I am not so in knowledge. Indeed, in every way we have made this plain to you in all things. Or did I commit a sin in humbling myself so that you might be exalted because I preached God's gospel to you free of charge? I robbed other churches by accepting support from them in order to serve you. And when I was with you and was in need, I did not burden anyone. for the brothers who came from Macedonia supplied my need. So I refrained and will refrain from burdening you in any way. As the truth of Christ is in me, this boasting of mine will not be silenced in the regions of Achaia." And why? Because I do not love you? God knows I do. And what I am doing, I will continue to do. in order to undermine the claim of those who would like to claim that in their boasted mission they work on the same terms as we do. For such men are false apostles, deceitful workmen, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ. And no wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. So it is no surprise if his servants also disguise themselves as servants of righteousness. Their end will correspond to their deeds." This is the word of the Lord. According to some new research, over the past 50 years, Americans have increasingly emphasized me over we, or individualism over community. Now that's based on a heavy-duty analysis of words and phrases that have appeared in American books published in the last 50 years. Researchers using Google Books scanned 750,000 books and compared the frequency of the me-words and phrases such as all about me, I am the greatest, I love me, my needs, etc. with we-words. such as community goals, we are one, work as a team, common good, and so forth. Researchers concluded that the result shows an increasing focus on the solitary self. According to yet another comprehensive study done by five psychologists, today's college students are more narcissistic and self-centered than their predecessors. From 1982 to 2006, 16,475 college students completed an evaluation called the NPI, the Narcissistic Personality Inventory. The standard inventory asks for rated responses to such statements as, if I ruled the world, it would be a better place. I think I'm a special person, and I can live my life the way I want to. the nationwide results were quite telling with respect to the growing problem of narcissism in our society. The study asserts that narcissists are more likely to have romantic relationships that are short-lived, they are at risk for infidelity, they lack emotional warmth, they are exhibiting game-playing, dishonesty, over-controlling and violent behaviors. The researchers trace the phenomenon back to the self-esteem movement that emerged in the 1980s, and they conclude that the effort to build self-confidence has gone too far. As an example, they cite the lyrics of a song commonly sung to the tune of Frère Jacques in preschool. I am special, I am special, look at me, look at me. Well, I would say that even though this is an increasingly greater problem in our society, this is not by any stretch of the imagination a new problem. We might more accurately think of this as a new manifestation of an age-old problem. An age-old problem, that's a three-letter word that begins with S and ends with N, and it has a great big I in the middle. It's about me, putting me first. I was thinking as I was looking at this this week of a children's musical I directed way back in the early part of my ministry, and children on both sides of the stage, and on one side they held up the letter I and they said, I, trouble. On the other side of the stage, they held up, I, trouble, and then together, everybody's talking about number one, and so on. So this problem, this age-old problem of putting I in the center of everything, is exactly what Paul is facing as he writes what we've just read in 2 Corinthians this morning. He's coming head-on against this against this temptation to put yourself at the front of everything. He's looking at this group of self-absorbed, self-promoting false teachers who have infiltrated the church in Corinth. Paul would much, much rather be talking about Jesus than himself, and though right in verse 1 he recognises that any kind of boasting is foolishness, though Paul defines the very idea of trying to defend himself as distasteful, and though he abhors self-commendation, he is willing to meet his enemies on their own turf and to engage in such distasteful foolishness in order to answer the charges that are being brought against him. He cannot allow these false apostles, these deceitful workmen to destroy his reputation and to undermine his teaching. So the defense that Paul is working on here, it's not for his own sake. No, it's for the sake of the Corinthians so that they are not cut off from the blessings and the benefits that the true gospel of Jesus Christ brings to a believer. As Paul launches into this in verse 2, he immediately begins by comparing himself to the father of the bride, and I'm not talking about Steve Martin or Spencer Tracy and those very comedic movies. He is describing himself as father of the bride, verse 2, for I feel a divine jealousy for you since I betrothed you to one husband to present you as a pure virgin to Christ. Now, those who are fathers, those who have had fathers, those who have been married know what an incredible experience and joy it is for the father of the bride to walk his little girl down the aisle on that special wedding day. It is the father's joy. It is the father's privilege to be able to present to the bridegroom a pure, spotless bride. And in the culture and in the time in which Paul is writing, this practice and this need of the father to protect and to secure his girl's purity for the groom is so much more important than we might realize when we quickly read through the Scriptures today. The Jewish betrothal period usually lasted for a year or more. And though the couple was not allowed to consummate their marriage physically, the couple were legally regarded as husband and wife, and betrothal could only be broken by death or by actual divorce. Unfaithfulness was, of course, considered adultery. When we come to the familiar words in the Christmas story of Jacob learning about Mary's condition that she is going to bear Christ and not initially understanding all that, it tells us in the text in Matthew that Joseph was going to put her away quietly because he didn't want to proceed into this relationship with a girl who had gone out and become with child. However, we know how that changes as the angel speaks to Joseph. But that's the kind of culture in which Paul is writing about this father of the bride story. During the betrothal period, it was the father's responsibility to protect his daughter and to make sure that she remained faithful to her pledged husband. He would then present her at the wedding ceremony as a pure and a spotless virgin. There were not just moral implications to this at this time, there were also economic implications as well, because when a marriage took place in the Jewish society, there was a bride's price that the groom and his family presented to the bride's family in order to participate in joining husband and wife together. And if the girl was found not to have lived up to all of the qualities and conditions that were expected, that bride's price was removed. And so Paul compares what he has, this fatherly concern, this divine jealousy for the Corinthians, to being father of the bride. Now notice that Paul says he has a divine jealousy for the Corinthians. There is a kind of jealousy that's negative and no good, that human jealousy is a vice, that green-eyed monster, that envy that sometimes creeps into our minds and our hearts. That's something that needs to be put away with God's help through Christ. But Paul has a divine jealousy, which is a virtue. He has a focus on the purity of the Corinthians. He has a focus on the holiness of this people that he has had the privilege and the experience of leading to faith in Jesus Christ. In the Old Testament, there's an incredible story in Numbers chapter 25. You can look that up later and read it. It gives us a great graphic illustration of how this divine jealousy functions. This is the story of Phineas. Phineas is one of the Jewish young people at the time when this event occurs, who are making their way through the wilderness, heading towards the Promised Land, and God has told the people that they are not to intermarry. And there is someone inside the Israelite camp who brings a Moabite woman into his tent and who unites with her. And Phineas is so incensed and so outraged, so filled with this kind of divine jealousy that he takes a spear and he goes in the tent and with one stroke of the spear, he goes right through the man and right through the woman. And God says to Phineas, you have been jealous with my jealousy. This is the kind of jealousy that Paul has for the church. And Paul will do anything to protect the church's purity. When the Corinthians came to faith in Christ, Paul essentially betrothed them to Christ. And having gotten engaged at conversion, the Corinthians, like all church-age believers, will be presented to Christ as His pure, spotless bride without blemish or without wrinkle. at his rapture of his church. So Paul takes this illustration of being father of the bride and he turns a corner in verse 3 and talks about the world's very first bride. Who was the world's first bride? Of course, it was Eve. And Paul begins in verse 3, he says, but I am afraid. And I read that this week and I immediately thought of the good message that Bill gave you two weeks ago about anxiety and fear and how we shouldn't be afraid. But the kind of fear that Paul has here is actually a good fear because this is a holy fear. This is the kind of fear that's described in Scripture as the fear of the Lord. It's not a timid, it's not a cowardly fear. It's a holy, reverent, awesome, worshipful fear. And Paul says, I am afraid that just as the serpent deceived Eve. Stop right there for a minute. The serpent deceived Eve. You know, Eve did not mean to rebel against God. Eve didn't wake up one day and say, this is the day. This is the day I'm going to cross the line. This is the day I'm going to do exactly what God told me not to do. No, no. She was deceived. She was hooked. She was taken in, just as P.T. Barnum so famously said, there is a sucker born every minute. She was a sucker. And so are you and so am I so many times. We fall into the deceit and the deception of Satan. And Satan's strategy always is to cast doubt. He casts doubt in his mind. Did God really say this? Did God really say this? And R. Ken Hughes has a fantastic quote I wrote down. He says, Satan encircled her soul with sequential coils of deception. He encircled her soul with sequential coils of deception. He appealed to what we read in 1 John 2, 15 and 16 as the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the boastful pride of life. The lust of the eyes. She said, oh, the fruit looks good. It's appealing. It looks very appetizing. The lust of the flesh. Satan said, you can be like God. You can be like God. Just take it. Take it. The boastful pride of life, Eve, you're not number one. Eve, you're number two. You could be number one. Just take the fruit. And so in gullibility, she listens. She crosses the line. She helps plunge. all of humanity into the sinful state in which we are naturally born. And as we look at what Paul is writing here, as we look at what happened to Eve, we have to recognize we're no different, we're no better, we are all susceptible to gullibility on some level. And Paul's fear here is that in the same way that Satan deceived Eve, The Corinthians, their thoughts are going to be led astray from a sincere and a pure devotion to Christ. He is so afraid that Satan is going to cloud their thinking, that their lack of discernment is just allowing them to embrace any old teaching that comes their way. Now this lack of discernment is a major problem in the church. It was true at the beginning of the church, it's true today. Because we know first and foremost that the spiritual battle in which we are engaged, in which Satan is coming against us, is a battle for the mind. It's a battle for taking control of our thoughts and we talked a few weeks back about how we need to take every thought captive. How we need to bathe ourselves with the Word of God so that we have a Christian worldview, a Christian way of looking at everything that's going on around us. This spiritual battle is a real ideological battle. John MacArthur writes, the Church's willingness to tolerate error in the name of unity, coupled with a lack of biblical and doctrinal knowledge, has crippled its ability to discern. We need to guard against anything that threatens or blocks our ability to discern truth from error. The true Gospel is a simple Gospel. The essence of the Christian life is simplicity and purity of devotion to Jesus Christ. There is only one Jesus. There is only one Spirit. There is only one Gospel. And the hallmark of false religions and cults has been and continues to be a distortion of one or more of these three elements. In Corinth, Paul's fear is that they are, in verse 4, falling for another Jesus. That they are going after a different spirit. That they are embracing a different gospel. Instead of viewing Jesus Christ as the second person of the Trinity, the one who became man, the one who dies an atoning sacrifice for sin, the one who rises from the dead to prove his power over sin and death, cults and false religions see Jesus as a good man, maybe even a guru, perhaps a prophet, or some sort of social or political revolutionary. There's one cult that sees Jesus as being another name for Michael, the archangel. Some call him a spirit child of God, others an emanation from God. They see him as anything but who he is, true God in the flesh, just as we confessed earlier this morning in the words of the Apostles' Creed. The deceptive, schemes of demons, the deceptive schemes of depraved people, they permeate every aspect of our society. This includes morality, sociology, education, politics, science, the arts, and especially religion. Especially religion. Satan, the father of lies, has all kinds of deceptive falsehoods to throw your way continually from sun up till sun down. And so from the beginning of their lives until the end, many who belong to Satan and to his kingdom are beguiled and seduced by one lie after another. We are not, as some people would like to claim, all God's children. Jesus, when He was encountering the Pharisees, He told them point blank, you know what? You are of your father, the devil. And if you want to hit the point home and get personal with it, look at Ephesians 2, verse 3. Here's a verse that's addressed to all those who have come to believe in Jesus Christ, and it clearly delineates our spiritual genealogy, this genealogy that you share, the genealogy that I share. Paul writes in Ephesians 2, verse 3, we all once lived in the passions of our flesh. carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. That's our spiritual genealogy. That's how we came into the world. And if you believe that we are all God's children, then you do not believe what the Bible teaches. If you want to say that we are all someone's children, well, then based on the Bible, you must say that by nature, We are all Satan's children. That's our default setting. That's the way we come out of the box. And so the false teachers in Corinth, though they claim to be allied with Christ, identified with Christ, the Jesus they preach is not the Jesus of the Scriptures. In reality, they are demonic teachers whose true mission is to lead people away from the truth, away from the simplicity of the Gospel. These false teachers in this particular circumstance see the church as already wed to Christ. And they preach a sort of Christian triumphalism that would not feel like what we might call today your best life now. But that's not it. That's not Christianity. That is quite at odds with what Jesus says in Matthew 16, verse 24. If anyone would come after me, if anyone would follow me, he must deny himself, take up his cross. and follow me. That's a lifelong commitment that has a cost, or as Bonhoeffer put it in the title of his book, the cost of discipleship. Oh, there are blessings and benefits unnumbered to following Christ, but there is also a cost that goes along with it. And so Paul is teaching these young believers that we are betrothed to Christ and we are waiting. We are waiting for the wedding day. And while we're waiting for that incredible day, we are to pursue the holiness without which no one will see the Lord. We are to be growing in the grace and the knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. We are to be transformed into His image through the renewing of our minds. This table that we'll come to in just a few more minutes, this table not only looks back to what Jesus has done for us, it looks forward to that wedding. It looks forward to that wedding supper that one day those who are in Christ will share together with Him. Paul goes on, he says, you know, okay, I agree, I may not talk like a super-apostle, but I'm not inferior in knowledge. There's no one. There's no one who can declare the simple gospel of Jesus Christ more plainly than Paul. As we've considered previously at other points in this letter, Paul has all the marks of a genuine apostle, and he's going to hit three of them again in sort of rapid fire summary here. He has humility, he is basing everything that he does out of the truth, and also he is filled with love. Paul's humility in verse 7 is a humility that is marked by preaching the Gospel free of charge to these believers. Now, the charge against him by the false teachers, by the false apostles, the deceptive workmen, the charge that's being brought against him is that, well, preaching the Gospel for free doesn't make his ministry look real. It is kind of an interesting phenomenon, still happens in our world today, that free events tend to draw less of a crowd than ones that you have to pay a little something for. And a speaker's fee is usually determined by his or her status or prominence or his position. So, to give a free message in their minds, this is what it means. To give a free message means, well, A, you aren't worth anything, or B, your message isn't worth anything. So Paul gives the Gospel away for free because nobody will pay for it. Therefore, Paul is not a real apostle. Ta-da! That's their logic here. But on the contrary, it is Paul's humility that leads him to do this. He says, I robbed other churches in order to serve you. And by robbed, he wants to think of a stick-up and a hold-up man there. He's just saying that other churches have kept me going and contributed to my support so that I can be here and do this for you for free. And I'm not burdening any of you. I'm not looking for a handout. I'm here. I'm earning my own living. Paul worked as a tent maker during the time of his ministry there, and that's an interesting term that some of you may or may not know. Tent makers often we associate with missionaries, people who go into a mission field who are pursuing some sort of vocation, and as they pursue that vocation on the mission field, are sharing Christ and trying to get a church started there. So that's what Paul is doing. He's working in humility to build the church. And everything he is doing there is marked by the truth in verse 10. We see the truth is in him. He doesn't just proclaim the truth, he lives it. Back to chapter 2, verse 17 of this letter, he says, we're not peddling the Word of God. We don't peddle the Word of God like some people do. No, he's an example of impeccable integrity. So his ministry is marked by a basis in the truth. And verse 11, it's marked by an incredible love. It shows with his love, it shows the ridiculous nature of the charge that's being brought against him. What? Because I don't take money from you? You don't think I love you? But God knows his heart. God knows his heart. What a tremendous comfort that is to you when you are falsely accused, that God knows your heart. I know many of you have had that experience. Someone has misread you, misinterpreted you, may have falsely accused you and perhaps even spread that beyond your own circle. All we have in those moments is to stand before God and He knows our heart. So Paul says, God knows my heart. I have love for you. And this is why I'm doing what I'm doing. Verse 13, Paul's talking about these false apostles, these deceitful workmen who disguise themselves as apostles of Christ. They wear spiritual disguises, like they put on spiritual Halloween costumes almost. And they follow the pattern of Satan who masquerades as an angel of light. Satan's servants masquerade as servants of righteousness, but in reality, they are enlisted in the cause of unrighteousness. Now, this was a very hard word then, and it has a very hard sound to it today, in an era where the gospel of tolerance, the gospel of accommodation has replaced the gospel of Jesus Christ in many so-called churches. Truth is so easily, truth is so freely sacrificed on the altar of unity. Why can't we all just get along? Why can't we just co-exist? Well, doctrine doesn't matter what matters is love. Or it doesn't matter what you believe as long as you believe something after all. Aren't all religious beliefs paths that lead to the same end? Well, Paul would give a resounding no to all of that here. And he would say we cannot sacrifice truth on the altar of unity. Truth is the very foundation of the basis upon which the church is built. And hopefully you are here today as someone who loves Jesus Christ who said, I am the way, I am the truth, I am the life. You know, your love for the truth will become most apparent when you are confronted by the truth. When you're confronted by the truth, what do you do? How do you respond? Do you embrace the truth? Or do you run the other way? It's interesting that those who most frequently run to the umbrella of tolerance for protection have the most to lose when they are confronted by the truth. When the truth is brought to bear on them, they frequently react with fury. But if you love the truth, if you love Jesus Christ, then when the truth of the Gospel and the authority of Scripture is at stake, you will stand as Paul does, and you will unequivocally expose the shallow convictions, the misplaced values, the unholy affections which are so damningly preached. by those who are false apostles, deceitful workmen who hide behind the shield of culturally sanctioned tolerance or whatever the religion du jour may happen to be in any of the coming seasons of life that God may grant to us. by saying this morning, this is not a new problem. So we see that Paul's confronting it almost 2,000 years ago, but it was not even a new problem then. It's not just a New Testament problem. This problem has many echoes and many reverberations throughout the Old Testament. I just want to share two with you this morning so we can sort of see how things have gone over the course of Biblical and our modern history. Both Jeremiah and Ezekiel, the prophets, addressed the issue of what they call false So here Paul has false apostles. Ezekiel, Jeremiah are dealing with false shepherds. Jeremiah 23, 1 and 2 says, Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture, declares the Lord. Therefore, thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, concerning the shepherds who care for my people. You have scattered my flock and have driven them away, and you have not attended to them. Behold, I will attend to you. for your evil deeds, declares the Lord. A similar theme in Ezekiel, chapter 34, verses 2 and following. Son of man, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel. Prophesy and say to them, even to the shepherds, thus says the Lord God, Ah, shepherds of Israel, you who have been feeding yourselves. You've been feeding yourselves. Isn't that narcissism? You've been feeding yourselves. Should not the shepherds feed the sheep? You eat the fat. You clothe yourselves with the wool. You slaughter the fat ones, but you do not feed the sheep. The weak you have not strengthened. The sick you have not healed. The injured you have not bound up. The strayed you have not brought back. The lost you have not sought. And with force and harshness you have ruled them. So they were scattered because there was no shepherd, and they became food for all the wild beasts." Jesus. In his Sermon on the Mountain, Matthew 7, verses 15 and 16, he says, Beware, beware of false prophets who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. You will recognize them by their fruit. So there is a past, and there is a present dimension to this problem, and there is a future dimension to it as well. And I would just ask children, young people, hang in there for a minute. This is for you. Maybe this will sink in because you will have to deal with this if you live for Jesus Christ in your life. Because Matthew 24 says, false Christs and false prophets will arise and perform great signs and wonders so as to lead astray, if possible even, Paul, when writing to his young protege Timothy, the young man he was mentoring for ministry, in 1 Timothy 4, verses 1 and 2, he says, Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons through the insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared. Later in his second letter to Timothy in chapter 3, verses 12 and 13, he says, So my dear friends, how desperately we need to guard our hearts, to guard our minds, to guard our lives, by being taken in by smooth and clever and slick sounding presentations and proclamations. You know, so-called Christian TV and radio has benefits, but they're also so much to be aware of, if you are a frequenter of those particular forms of media. You need to be like the Bereans in the Book of Acts, a group of people who, when they heard Paul come and proclaim Christ to them, they went back to the Scriptures to see if what Paul was saying was really there. So they evaluated what they were hearing, they exhibited discernment, and discovered that, yes indeed, Paul was telling them the truth. We all need to be like the noble Koreans and examine what we're hearing, where we're picking things up. I would ask you, please, you need to examine me. You need to take what I say to you week after week and look back in the Scriptures and see how it fits together. Occasionally someone will come to me and say, you know, you said this, but there's this other Scripture. How does this Scripture fit into that? And that just helps sharpen me as well in my thinking and in my ability to proclaim. There's no one. that's infallible. No one that is infallible. My heart just sinks when I know of people, dear people, Christian believing people, not saying they're not Christian, but who get drawn in hook, line and sinker by people who are at best on the very fringes of Christianity, if not completely over the line. I remember a time in one of the other churches I served previously, I went to see a woman Dear, dear, godly woman in Christ went to her home. She only had a few more weeks to live, and she knew that. And while we visited, I noticed there was a very unusual kind of plant in the planter. And I come, and she says, oh yeah, I got that as a thank you gift from so-and-so's ministry for sending them support. And my heart just sank, because I knew that that ministry was not proclaiming the true Gospel of Jesus Christ. And she says, you know, they taught me the greatest thing. She said, they taught me that the power of God's Word is only unleashed if you read it out loud. Well, I have nothing wrong with reading God's Word out loud, but that's not true. The power of God's word is in God's word. Whether you read it silently, read it out loud, the power is there because it is the living word of God. And I've just felt so bad when after a funeral her husband later told me she'd given thousands and thousands of dollars to this particular ministry. Such speech is nothing more than satanic lies and deception. It's designed to make you feel like you can find spiritual power in some kind of formula, some kind of ritual. And so there are many false teachers in the land today, many who use biblical terms but they apply to them a radically different meaning than what the Bible intends to convey by them. So have discernment, listen carefully, examine the scriptures, go beyond a teacher's words and examine his or her life. I think you know that religion is a big business and there are many, many who want to cash in on it. There are just all kinds of ways. to scam people and to take things for themselves and to use them in inappropriate ways. Religion is a big business. Christian publishing is a big business. I was so chagrined to read last month that Thomas Nelson, and I'm not bashing them, I'm just saying, again, we need to share. I read that Thomas Nelson was putting out another so-called translation of the Bible that's going to be written as a screenplay script. and they're going to rework the whole Bible so there's stage directions, and there's dialogue, and they're going to fill in all the blanks for people who can't fill in the blanks for themselves. And Thomas Elson has historically been associated with publishing the Word and publishing things that are right on, and I just felt so horrible when I read that. But again, I'm not saying don't buy anything from them, I'm just saying be aware. Be aware. Christian music is a big business. Those who are consumed with amassing wealth and amassing power, they are not true servants of Christ, according to this text. So avoid those things that are going to pull you away from the true, simple gospel of Jesus Christ. Avoid those voices that are telling you that you must make tolerance a virtue in our society today. In his book, Triumphalism to Maturity, D. A. Carson writes, the appeal to limitless toleration presupposes the greatest evil is to hold a strong conviction that certain things are true and their opposites are false. But if we hold that God has revealed himself to men supremely in the person of his Son, but also in the words and the propositions of Scripture, then we have no right to treat as optional anything that God has said. The ability to discern between truth and error is vital to your spiritual health and to the health of Christ's church. To fail to exercise that kind of discernment is to open wide the door of the sheepfold and to invite Satan's savage wolves to ravage God's flock. Let's pray together.