Today we're going to be in Hebrews chapter 13 verse 9. I'm going to start reading in verse 7, and I'll read all the way through 16, but we're going to focus on verse 9. God's Word tells us to remember those who rule over you, who have spoken the Word of God to you, whose faith follow, considering the outcome of their conduct. But Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Do not be carried about with various and strange doctrines. For it is good that the heart be established by grace and not with foods which have not profited those who have been occupied with them. We have an altar from which those who serve the tabernacle have no right to eat, for the bodies of those animals whose blood is brought into the sanctuary by the high priest for sins are burned outside the camp. Therefore Christ also, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered outside the gate. Therefore let us go forth to him outside the camp bearing his reproach, for here we have no continuing city. but we seek the one to come. Therefore, by him let us continually offer the praise to God that is the fruit of our lips, giving thanks to his name. Do not forget to do good and to share, for with such sacrifices God is well pleased." Father, your word this morning calls us to watch over our doctrine, to keep ourselves from being carried around by various and strange doctrines. And Lord, we live in a world that has multiplied for itself far more strange doctrines than even perhaps there are sound doctrines. And so Lord, we pray that you would help us to do what your word tells us. Lord, as the good shepherd of your sheep, watch over the doctrines that we believe and keep us safe, Lord, from the devil who goes about like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. And Father, we pray this so that your church would be faithful so that we would be true and we would be pure, and that the gospel that we preach would be consistent with the one that was once and for all delivered to the saints. And we pray this in your name. Amen. Well, the scene is unfortunately all too common. If I've seen it once, I've seen it at least a dozen times. One time it was a family who had faithfully attended the church we used to attend. And they had attended for a number of years. Some of the family had been baptized. Many of them were members of the church. And without any apparent warning, they stopped coming to church. until a couple weeks later, they sent a letter to the church saying they had swam the Tiber. They had converted from Christianity to Roman Catholicism. It shocked us. We had no way of seeing it happen. And what had happened was this family had befriended them and very slowly and over a long period of time, suddenly began picking at their faith. And they had done it long enough and repetitively enough that eventually this family started picking at their own faith. And it made it all the more easy for them. to leave Christianity for Roman Catholicism. A few years after that, in the same church, a nice, nice looking homeschool family moved to town, came to the evening service at church, struck up some conversations and some friendships, exchanged some phone numbers, got some emails, and looked like they were just gonna settle into the church. What they started doing was inviting people over, passing out literature. making private meetings with people subtly, slowly, and over time, using the friendships that they developed to attack the faith until eventually a number of families left the church to start their own church that was centered around some of the most man-centered theology you could imagine. Unfortunately, that scene plays out in the lives of professing Christians all over the world and all the time. And when you see it, you wonder, how did someone who appeared to be so grounded, so solid, how did they go so far away from sound doctrine? And the reality is they did so quite easily. If we aren't on guard, how easy it would be for us to be carried away by various and strange doctrines. It should not come as a surprise to us that that's one of the most frequent warnings in all of the New Testament. The warning to guard our doctrine, to watch out for false teachers, to watch out for heresies creeping into the church. I actually debated, instead of preaching this morning, just reading through a list that I came up with of all the warnings in Scripture about guarding our doctrine, protecting ourselves from false teachers, because we could, for an hour, read those warnings. I'm not going to do that, because then you guys would wonder why you pay me, but I am going to read a number of passages just to give you something of the flavor of the frequency with which God's Word warns us to guard our doctrine. Matthew 7, 15-20 Beware of false prophets who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes from thorn bushes or figs from thistles? Even so, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Therefore, by their fruits you will know them. 1 John 4, 1-3 Beloved. Do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are from God. Because many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the spirit of God. Every spirit that confesses Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God. And every spirit that does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is not of God. And this is the spirit of the Antichrist, which you have heard was coming and is now already in the world. Acts chapter 20, verses 29 through 30. For I know this, that after my departure, savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock. Also from amongst yourselves, men will rise up, speaking perverse things to draw away the disciples to themselves. The Bible's full of warnings about false teaching, and the sheer frequency of those warnings should really tell us something of the danger of false doctrine. I mean, think about it like this. Let's say you're driving your truck or your Jeep or whatever in the mountains one day and you come up to a cattle guard with a fence on each side and on the right side is a sign that says private property, no trespassing. When I see that, here's what I do. I stop and I think, okay, is this someone, is there a public easement through this property or can I go through? Or is this legit? Or is this just some guy that's trying to protect his own little private part of a public mountain by putting up a sign hoping he can deter people? When I see one sign like that, I stop and I think for a minute and I usually turn around. But what if you come to the same cattle guard with the same fence and instead of one no trespassing sign, you see on every tree within a half a mile and every fence post signs everywhere, no trespassing. Trespassers will be shot. If you cross this, you will look like Swiss cheese when we are done with you. Survivors will be prosecuted. You see like hundreds of warning signs. You don't even think about crossing that one. The warnings are the exact same. The law is the exact same, but the frequency with which the second situation gives us warning shows us just how severe the consequences of breaking that law could be. And in the same way, the frequency with which God's word warns us about the danger of false teaching should cause us to look at it and say, this is probably far more serious than we've considered. But that's the thing that our passage warns us about in Hebrews this morning. It's the danger of false and strange doctrines. And so, as we begin, I'm gonna read our text one more time. Hebrews 13, verse nine. Do not be carried about by various and strange doctrines. For it is good that the heart be established by grace, not with foods which have not profited those who are occupied with them." We're going to focus primarily on the first half of verse 9. We're going to come back and look at the second half of verse 9 again next week. But we're going to look at verse 9 under three points. First, we're going to see the warning against strange doctrine. Then we're going to look at the source of that strange doctrine, and we'll close by looking at the antidote. How is it we can guard ourselves against sound doctrine? The warning is found there in the first phrase of verse 9. Don't be carried about with various and strange doctrine. That's the danger we're being warned against. It's the danger of being carried away by various and strange doctrines. and the expression be carried about. It's obviously a word picture, and it's a word picture that should bring to our minds one of two things. It may be referring to the cultural way in which people in Bible times when they were too weak or too young or too frail or in some way handicapped, they couldn't walk. And so what would happen is people would actually come and pick them up and carry them wherever they wanted or needed to go. We have an example of that in Mark chapter two and starting in verse one it says, again, he entered Capernaum after some days and it was heard that he was in the house and immediately many gathered together so that there was no longer room to receive them, not even near the door. And he preached the word to them. Then they came to him bringing a paralytic who was carried by four men. And when they came, And they saw that they could not come near because of the crowd. They uncovered the roof where he was. And when they had broken through, they let him down on a bed on which the paralytic was lying." So here's this guy who's paralyzed and he's got four friends. And what do they do? They pick him up. He can't walk. So they pick him up and they carry him wherever he wants to go. That may be the idea the author of Hebrews has in mind. And if it is, really the idea is that there's these people who are spiritually weak. They're spiritually infants. They're spiritually unable to stand on their own two feet against false doctrine. And so like a handicapped man sitting on the side of the road, they're really easy pickings for false teachers. The false teacher could come and pick them up and carry them doctrinally wherever he wanted to. That's one possibility of what the word picture is trying to show us. I think it's more likely the author has in mind really the image of a ship sitting in the water, a ship with no anchor, nothing to hold it in place, so that the strange doctrines are really like the tides and the winds that blow this ship wherever it wants to. And I say that's probably more likely because the imagery of ships and anchors and wind and those kinds of things is an imagery we see throughout the book of Hebrews. In chapter six, he was talking about the resurrected and ascended Christ. And he told us, this hope we have in verse 19, Hebrews 6, 19, this hope we have as an anchor for the soul, both sure and steadfast, that Jesus Christ has entered the presence behind the veil. So there's the imagery. He sees our souls like ships. But unlike here, being tossed around by strange doctrines, our souls in chapter 6, 19 have an anchor, they're rooted, they're held firmly in place by the resurrected and exalted Jesus. He also used that imagery back in chapter 2, verse 1, where he said, Therefore, we must give the most earnest heed to the things that we've heard, lest we drift away from it. The imagery is one of a ship just sitting there in the water, and imperceptibly and slowly it's moving farther and farther away. And because of the frequency with which he uses that kind of imagery, it seems more likely that he has the second idea in mind. But whatever he has in mind, whether it's someone who's too weak to carry themselves or to stand up on their own two feet or a ship, the expression of being carried away is a figure of speech. And it's not ultimately the wind or a person that picks this person up and carries them away, but the thing that picks them up and moves them and carries them away, he tells us, are various and strange doctrines. And the word that he uses for various has intended to show us that these doctrines he's talking about, these false teachings, can take on any number of forms. He's not only focused on one type of doctrine or one doctrine in particular, he's worried about many doctrines. And he mentions two of them in our passage. In verse eight, which we looked at last week, he wanted us to have a doctrinal foundation in Christ. He talked about the immutability of Jesus. He's the same yesterday, today, and forever. He wants us to be rooted in that doctrine because, as we'll see, that's a commonly attacked doctrine. But then, in verses 9 and 10, he'll talk about the doctrine of justification. The heart is established not with food, not with keeping the ceremonial Old Testament law, but the heart is established, he tells us, by grace. So he wants us to have a right understanding of how we're converted. Those are the primary two doctrines he has in mind that are being attacked. But by using the word various, he's showing us it's not just those doctrines. When we think of false doctrine, we should have a big picture understanding that says God's word is attacked in a lot of ways, and we need to guard the whole spectrum of our doctrine. But he tells us not only to be on guard against various doctrines, but also strange doctrines. And the word strange doesn't mean goofy like we would think. There's some goofy doctrines out there. One of them you can read about in Mormonism. Joseph Smith taught early on, he taught that there were people that lived on the moon who he said had a uniform size. They were all about six foot tall and they dressed like Quakers. That's old Mormon doctrine. That's goofy. one of the core beliefs of Scientology, it says that 75 million years ago we all lived in outer space under a leader named, an alien leader named Xenu. And Xenu had a problem in space and it was a problem of overpopulation and so what he did is he gave everyone a paralytic drug. and he put him on airplanes and he flew the airplanes down to earth and he stacked us, you and I, he stacked us at the bottom of a volcano and then he lowered a bomb into the volcano and when it blew up, he blew our souls to bits. And then, now millions of years later, the bits of our souls are collected and we're reassembled as people and Scientology would say we're actually living our lives right now in a movie for the entertainment of the aliens. There's some weird doctrines out there, but that's not what he's talking about. The idea behind these strange doctrines is that it's kind of the same idea as how we would use the word stranger. If we said you're a stranger, what we mean is you are someone not familiar to me. You're someone I don't know. You're someone that I've yet to experience. That's the idea behind the word strange. It's that there's doctrines that are not known to the people of God. They're doctrines that don't conform to the doctrines that have been passed down by Christ in his church, through his word, by the apostles and the prophets. They're the doctrines that would divert from the path of those things which Jude would tell us in Jude 1, 3, were once and for all delivered to the saints. And so when he tells us not to be carried around by various and strange doctrines, he's telling us not to be led away by any doctrines that are different to those that are clearly spelled out in the Word of God. Paul would tell the church at Galatia the same thing in Galatians 1.8, when he says, So the author of Hebrews is actually presupposing that there's a doctrinal standard. There's a doctrinal truth that has already been laid out in the Word of God that really sets the boundaries for our belief. And to leave the boundaries of that doctrine is to be off in the land of error and false doctrine. several years ago, there was a popular book called The Shack. I think they made it a movie now. And I had a number of people that I knew that were reading it, and so I read it just for the sake of dialoguing with them. And in The Shack, God is portrayed—I think the book actually calls her an Aunt Jemima-type figure. God is portrayed as a black woman who spends most of her time cooking in the kitchen. You don't have to have the gift of discernment to read that and go, that diverts from the doctrine of God in the Bible. Because the God of the Bible is portrayed not as a woman, but as a man. The God of the Bible is portrayed not as a visible person, but as spirit. God is spirit, John 4, 24. Those that worship him must worship in spirit and in truth. You don't have to have the gift of discernment to recognize that diverts from the path. That is a doctrine that is unknown. It's strange to the Bible. That's the idea behind these strange doctrines, and any doctrine that diverts from that standard should be rejected. One of the applications we should draw from the fact that the author designates these doctrines as strange is that if a doctrine is new, if a doctrine is less than 2,000 years old, it is of necessity wrong. If a doctrine or a teaching is consistent with the standard that's set out by the apostles and the prophets, and it is clearly taught by the Word of God, it's believable. But if it's new, if someone comes up and says, I got this new teaching, hey, no one's ever even heard this teaching, but guess what? I have new revelation from God. I have a new word. I have a new doctrine. It's definitely wrong. One of the most common characteristics of all false doctrines is that you can trace them back to a starting point somewhere in history after the closing of Scripture. If a doctrine is new, if it hasn't withstood the test of time, we must reject it. That doesn't mean every old doctrine is true. There's some old heresies. But if a doctrine is new, if some guy comes up and says, this is a hundred years old, It's wrong because it's different than what Christ delivered through his apostles. If you pick up a book and a little boy who's really cute on the front and he says, I went to heaven. And God gave me a message to bring back to you. And here's this exciting message from God. You don't have to finish the book. You know it's wrong. You know it's not true because it's new revelation. It's God coming, supposedly God coming and saying, what I have already delivered to my church through the apostles and prophets in the word of God was insufficient and now you need something else. So any doctrine that is new by definition is wrong. one of the principles of interpreting the Bible, and one of the things you should do as you encounter doctrine, if you hear a doctrine you haven't heard of, is you should ask yourself, can this doctrine be traced through church history back to the Apostles and the Prophets? If a doctrine wasn't believed by the church through history and it can't be traced through history to the Apostles and Prophets in Scripture, you should immediately reject it. because it's deviating from the path. It's strange to the Church of God and to the Word of God. Now, if you're a careful listener, you probably noticed I just changed the way I was talking. I made a step or a jump, depending on how you look at it. I moved from talking about the truth that's spelled out in the Word of God, and I brought into that discussion Church history. I said, also, the Church. And if you're discerning and you're listening carefully, you probably caught that, and maybe it even bothers you. Here's what I'm doing. I'm taking the principle from Hebrews 13 verse 9, and I'm extrapolating it, and also including with it 1 Timothy 3.15, 3.15 and 16. Listen to 1 Timothy 3.15 and 16. These things I write to you so that I hope although I hope to come to you shortly. But if I'm delayed, I write so that you may know how you should conduct yourselves in the house of God, which is the church of the living God." And then notice how Paul describes the church, the church of the living God. He said, which is the pillar and ground of truth. How does Paul envision the church and its relationship to doctrine? He says God has given the church to be the pillar, meaning it is the beam, it is the place that supports and upholds the body of truth that God has delivered, as well as the ground, it's the foundation, it's where the church must stand. That's how he envisions it. It's the church's job throughout all of history to uphold the truth. So when we put those two together, I would say, yes, we have to believe that God's word is sufficient, but at the same time, we recognize every heretic has a verse. The Word of God is inspired and it is inerrant, but my interpretation of it is not. And by asking ourselves, is this not only a doctrine taught in Scripture, but is it also a doctrine that's embraced by the pillar and the ground of truth throughout church history, we're ensuring that the doctrines we believe are true. I can make the Bible say whatever I want. I could build a solid biblical case for polygamy this morning. I actually heard a preacher one time, in all seriousness, and I don't even know if he did it, but he built a biblical case for why rape is okay. You can make the Bible say whatever you want. And one of the things we have to ask ourselves when we hear the Word of God taught, when we read books, when we read it for ourselves and draw conclusions, Not only is this true, but is this embraced and believed by the people of God throughout church history? Before we move on to see the origin of these strange doctrines, I also want you to notice the imagery behind being carried away actually tells us something of the ease by which we can be deceived by strange doctrines. What does a crippled person have to do to be carried across town? What does a ship have to do to drift off into the ocean somewhere? Absolutely nothing. The ship or the person being carried away is passive. He's not carrying himself away, he's being carried away. And so as we look at this passage, we should do so not with a doctrinal arrogance that thinks I have sound doctrine, therefore I'm immune to this. He's writing to people with really good doctrine. we should do so with a theological humility that recognizes, I am not immune to error. I am not above falling into strange doctrines. Therefore, as the word of God comes to us and warns us, don't be carried away by strange doctrines. This isn't a warning for those people out there. This is a warning for each and every one of us. Even if you love sound doctrine and you read a lot of theology, this is a warning for all of us that we need to guard ourselves and protect ourselves because falling into strange doctrine is easy. Second thing I want to do is look at the source of these strange doctrines. Where do these new and different false doctrines come from? Of course, we know where we encounter these doctrines. We encounter them when we turn on religious TV shows. We encounter them when we pick up books at the Christian bookstore. You encounter them when you get on Facebook and someone posts a religious meme on Facebook and it says, if you share this, God will bless you with a million different things tomorrow. And we encounter them everywhere we go. We encounter them at work as we interact with people from other religions. That's where we encounter them, but where do they come from? Listen to the answer from 1 Timothy 4, 1 and 2. 1 Timothy 4 tells us false doctrines come from demons and deceitful spirits. Does that surprise you? We think of doctrine as really amoral, as if there's no moral bearing to it. It's a matter of personal preference. You can believe what you believe, I believe what I believe, and God will sort it out in the end and they're both okay. We have to understand there's really only two forces at work in the world. There's the forces of darkness, there's the forces of the demonic sinful world in which we live, and there's the forces of light and the forces of righteousness, and the two are at constant opposition. And part of that opposition is that the demonic world in which we live takes the Word of God and twists it. You remember the first temptation in Genesis chapter 3? What does the devil do? He twists the Word of God. What does the devil do in Matthew chapter 4 when he comes and he tempts Jesus? He takes the Word of God, he quotes Scripture, and what does he do? He twists it. He tweaks it. He makes it to be something less than palatable to us. He makes it to be no longer relevant to us. So understand that false doctrine comes from the demonic realm. The practical implications of that are huge. One of them is if we can understand that we will be far more cautious against false doctrine. knowing that although it may come from a cute little boy or girl who said they went to heaven, although it may come from a cute little boy or girl riding their bike right out of high school knocking on your door, although it may come from your grandma who's just a nice, sweet lady spewing heresy, although it may come from a theologian with letters after his name, no matter where it comes from, if it diverts from the word of God, the teaching itself is not amoral, it is demonic. One of the reasons we have to view false teaching as demonic is because if we do so, we will also recognize that false teaching is not always packaged as dangerous. One of the ways the devil works is by being sneaky and deceptive. Listen to 2 Corinthians 11, 12-15. But what I do, I will also continue to do, that I might cut off the opportunity that those who desire to have an opportunity to be regarded just as we are in things of which they boast. For such are false apostles. And notice what he says, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into apostles of Christ. And no wonder, for Satan himself transforms himself into an angel of light. Therefore, is it any great thing if his ministers also transform themselves into ministers of righteousness, whose end it is according to their works? Paul's also warning the church at Corinth against the danger of false teaching. And he says, they look like Christians. They disguise themselves, they sneak, they masquerade themselves looking just like anybody else. And that's part of their deception. One of the ways the devil spreads false teaching is by making it look so close to the truth that sometimes we don't even recognize it. He makes it look appealing. He uses the same words we do, very different definitions often, but he'll use the same words. He'll say things that sound so true that if we are not cautious, we will be led away by things that are almost true. Listen to 2 Peter 2, 1 and 2. But there were also false prophets among the people, even as there will be false prophets among you who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Lord who bought them, and bring on themselves swift destruction. And many will follow their destructive ways because of whom the way of the truth will be blasphemed." Notice how Satan's working. He's working secretly. Satan doesn't come into a church and say, hey, look, here's a heretic. take a seat and learn some heresy. That's not how he works. He comes in and he says, hey, I just want to tell you what God has been doing in my life and I just want to talk like one of you guys. I might be a Baptist, I might be a Presbyterian, I might look just like everybody else, but underneath it, he's twisting scripture. Sometimes the difference between truth and error, sound doctrine and false teaching, isn't a mile, but a centimeter. It's a nuance. It's really emphasizing one truth to the neglect of another, or overemphasizing another truth to the neglect of that one. The devil is deceptive in twisting doctrine. And if we're not on guard, we will be led away. Other times Satan disguises himself and uses deception that's clothed in friendship. The two examples I began with were both people who had been led away by friends, by people who had befriended them and come alongside of them and been helpful to them. We have a friend who goes to another church, and their closest friend in this world is a Mormon. There's nothing wrong with having a Mormon friend, but that's their closest friend. And so when they need help, who do they call? When they have a fun time one night, who do they call? When they go hang out in the mountains, who do they call? Most of their life is spent with this Mormon guy. And you wouldn't look at, he himself I wouldn't say is like this demonic dude who has this sinful agenda and he's just like evil in and of himself. But understand, he is influenced. He is acting consistently with his false doctrine. So he brings to that friendship a false doctrine and a sinful agenda. And don't think you can have those friendships without being influenced in some way. Friendships are important. Friendships are an opportunity for sharing your faith, but friendships have consequences. So be on guard. Don't allow yourself to develop your closest friendships with people who are in other religions outside of the faith. Be friends with them, evangelize them, love them, have them over for dinner, but beware that although you have an agenda, so do they. We also need to know that the origin of these strange doctrines is demonic because we will be far less lackadaisical and far more vigilant when we encounter them if we know that they're demonic attacks on God's word. Chris Kyle was one of America's most decorated snipers in American history, and his first tour in Iraq, he was actually commanded to shoot a lady carrying a baby. And you hear that, and that's horrible. That's a terrible thing to even think about, but the horror of it is actually only increased by the fact that she had a baby in one hand and a grenade in the other. and she's moving towards American ground troops with the intent of detonating a grenade and killing them. Possibly even detonating the grenade and killing herself and her baby. From one perspective you could look at that lady and you could say, she's just a beautiful Iraqi woman carrying a baby. That's true. But from another perspective, she is a bomb-carrying woman, masked in a burka, hiding behind a baby. With destructive intent. That's how deceptive false doctrine is. That's how destructive false doctrine is. We could look at it on one hand and be like, you know, it's not that bad. I mean, it does come looking like this cute little kid on the cover of a book. It does come looking like these nice people in this nice religion with well-mowed lawns and well-behaved children. But what's underneath it? What's going on behind it? It's a sinful attack on the word of God. The last thing I want to do is look at the antidote for strange doctrine. Our passage tells us not to be carried away by various and strange doctrines, but how do we make sure that happens? I would suggest the best way to ensure that you're not carried about by strange doctrines is to be familiar with and grounded in sound doctrine. When they train federal agents to spot counterfeit bills, they begin by teaching them what a real bill looks like. John MacArthur wrote about that in a book and one of the major Christian bloggers wondered if that was true and so he went to the Federal Bank in Canada and he asked for a tour and an interview and he had to go through a bunch of security and he validated that what MacArthur was saying is true. And if you want to know what a false bill looks like, you start by learning what is real. You start by learning what is true. This blogger Tim Challies said that they would often start by just the feel of it. Real money is printed on a cloth type paper and so it has its own feel. Then you talk about all the different characteristics and on every true bill there's specific identifying characteristics and that the presence of those identifying characteristics validates the truth of that money. And in the same way, one of the best ways to keep yourself from being carried away, deceived by strange doctrines, is by familiarizing yourself with the touch and the feel and the sound of true doctrine. So don't hear a sermon like this and be like, you know, I want to run out and find some strange doctrine and see if I can identify it. Entrench yourself in sound doctrine. Fill your mind with the truths of God's Word. Just like a hundred dollar bill has identifying characteristics on it to help us know that it's real, spiritual truth also has identifying characteristics. There's things that in all spiritual truth you should be able to feel it, you should be able to touch it, you should be able to listen to it and say, I know that's true because of this. And there's two identifying characteristics of true doctrine that are given to us in Hebrews 13. The first one we looked at last week in verse 8 where he told us that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Think of the false doctrines you're familiar with and ask yourself, how many of them in some way distort or diminish the person and work of Jesus? How many deny his eternality? How many deny his hypostatic union, that he was both simultaneously fully God and fully man? How many deny the substitutionary nature of his atonement? How many distort his place in the Trinity? Jesus is often the most attacked place in our doctrine. We have to understand who is Christ, what has he done, how has he done it, why has he done it. We have to know Christ as intimately as the Word of God describes him, so that when Christ is attacked, we understand it. Colossians chapter 2 verse 8 says, That's what false doctrines bring. They bring deceit, they bring trickery, they bring worldly philosophies, but they don't bring Christ. They don't bring Jesus, the God-man who becomes like his creation to die and to be raised on our behalf and to give us eternal life. So know Christ and find him in the word. Second identifying mark, we're going to look at more fully next week in verse nine, but it tells us that it's good for the heart to be established by grace and not with foods which have not profited those who have been occupied by them. For our purposes this morning, it should be evident to us that he's contrasting two ways of justification. Two ways that the heart is established in the presence of God. First, he tells us the heart is, it's good that the heart is established by grace. Then he contrasts that with another way people frequently try to be established in the presence of God, and it's through works. The works he has in mind are specifically observing the Old Testament dietary laws. And in the same way that many false doctrines distort and remove the person of Jesus, they also attack the heart of the gospel, the doctrine of justification. How is it we can be made right with God? But not all false doctrines will come and say you just have to earn your way to heaven. The grace of God is also attacked by an unbiblical view that we would call hyper-grace. There's actually a big movement right now, even in the Reform circles, that distorts the grace of God by overemphasizing it to the neglect of the truth. that Jesus, the same grace that saves us, is also the grace that gives us a new heart and causes us to walk in obedience to the laws of God and practical holiness. There's this hyper grace crowd that would say we have liberty in Christ and we are free, and that's true, but the freedom that we have in Christ is not. to break the law of God. The freedom we have in Christ is a freedom that gives us the grace of God to keep the law of God. And so be on guard and ask yourself, as you hear doctrines of grace and doctrines of salvation and doctrines of sanctification, ask yourself, is this a doctrine that not only presents to me that there is nothing in my hands I bring simply to the cross I cling kind of grace, but is it also a transforming grace? Is it a grace that changes me from the inside out, out of the new heart that God has given me under the new covenant to make me more like Jesus? So when you encounter a doctrine, look at its grace. Look at the grace that it teaches. Does it teach justification by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone? And does it teach that the same grace that saves us is also the same grace that changes us? Those are the marks of a sound gospel. Let me give you two more antidotes to help you stay anchored from being carried away by various and strange doctrines. The first one comes from verse seven. Remember those who led you, who taught the word of God to you. Imitate their faith and consider the outcome of their life. He's speaking primarily of the former pastors of this church. And he says, remember your leaders. And the primary thing he wants them to remember is what they taught them. The leaders of this church taught them the word of God. They rooted them, they grounded them in sound doctrine. That's the role of a pastor. That's the role of your pastors. Your pastors in this church are God's gift to you. Although they're imperfect, although their doctrine is imperfect, they are nevertheless God's gift to you to help you stay rooted in truth. And so if you're reading a book and something doesn't sound right, If you're watching some TV preacher with a nice suit and he says something that doesn't sound right, if you're sitting there talking with a coworker and they say, hey, this is what we believe and this is why you guys are wrong and you don't know what to say, call your pastors. Ask them to help you, to navigate the word of God to you and to keep you rooted in the word of God. Final way we can stay rooted and grounded in truth is found in Acts chapter 17, verses 10 and 11. Therefore, the Bereans immediately sent Paul and Silas away by night to Berea. And when they arrived, they went to the synagogue of the Jews, and they were far more fair-minded than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word of God with readiness, and they searched the scriptures daily to find out if these things were so. One of the best ways to stay rooted in sound doctrine is to simply go back to the Word of God, to be a Berean, and to say, are the things that I'm reading on Facebook matching the things that I see in the Word of God? I didn't get on any of your guys' Facebook pages this week for this purpose, but I did get on some other people's Facebook pages for this purpose. And the kinds of things that professing Christians post on Facebook that sound good, that sound true, God wants you to know this. If you share this, this will happen and God will do it over and over and over and over again. And they sound so cool. And you're just like, man, I want that. I want God's blessing. I'm gonna share. I'm gonna like, I'm gonna do whatever it tells me to do. But if you go to the word of God, you won't find that. The word of God has got to be the standard by which we judge everything. And when we do that, We will keep ourselves from being carried around by various and strange doctrines. And Father, we can't do this without your help. Father, we know that the winds of strange doctrine blow strong. They blow constantly. And Lord, if we are not on guard and we're not strengthened by you, we will be blown away. So Lord, we pray that you would help us to avail ourselves of the means that you've given us to keep ourselves rooted and grounded in truth. And Lord, we pray this in your name. Amen.