I said I wanted to focus one more time on these false teachers here, and that might seem excessive, but I have at least two pastoral reasons for wanting to do so. One, as I said a couple weeks back, that almost every New Testament book warns us of the reality of false teachers. And secondly, because in that, so many times, those false teachers do not come from without, but come from within. And that means comes from our own. Like again, Acts 20, when Paul is addressing the Ephesian elders, he warned them that from among your own people will come these ravenous wolves. and that will seek to devour the church. Even John will say in 1 John that these antichrists were among us and they went out from us. For a season they were with us. And the elders maintain a list of all the antichrist people in the congregation. We'll be contacting you later today. No one's laughing, that was a little bit of humor. The point of the humor is that we all have to take seriously that we can fall into the trap of being, in fact, the false teacher. It's easy for us to point fingers at other churches or other people, look at them, that group, that denomination, that cult, that evangelist, and say, aren't they terrible? And we should be aware of those things. And it might even be something we can do, well, yeah, and every church is the potential of a false teacher arising, as Paul warned the Ephesian elders. But it's a little harder for us to take ownership of the fact that you or I could become that. We assume our motives are always good. I am a Christian, I had a thought, therefore it must be a Christian thought, is kind of the logic that we apply to ourselves. And yet, look at throughout the New Testament, not only are there false teachers, But look at the trouble that different people have created in the local church. Paul will have to admonish the elders on the island of Crete to be able to reprove a sound doctrine. And then in chapter three, verse 10, to admonish and to separate from the elders the heretic, that's what the Greek word comes into English, but the divisive man, the one who's trying to rally a group of people over here against the elders or the congregation. We have cited in previous times, repeatedly, the warning of the book of Hebrews in the second chapter, where we're told that we have to be, For this reason, we must pay much closer attention to what we've heard so that we do not drift away. For if the word spoken through the angels proved unalterable and every transgression and disobedience received a just penalty, how will we escape if we neglect so great a salvation? The illustration I typically use, as you who attend here regularly know, is that of a little boat, little rowboat on one of our lakes around here. You've been out maybe fishing, and you got your fish, and you row in, and you put the boat right next to the dock. You get out and take your fish, and you walk into the house. But if you don't tie the boat to the dock, after lunch, where will the boat be? in the middle of the lake. We would like to think the boat would just stay by the dock, right? Wouldn't life be great? You'd never have to tie up your boats, always there. But that's a metaphor, the way I'm using it, for the Christian life. I believe it's fair to say that every last heresy that has ever plagued the church started within a local church. And we are the ones who must be aware lest we too drift. Think of the different Christian schools throughout the history of just America. Very few have remained faithful. The only one off the top of my head that I can say is Moody Bible Institute. Now, we don't necessarily agree with them and some of their doctrine, but Moody has remained pretty faithful to a conservative biblical view of the Christian life. But you can't name a whole lot of others. Even in the early part of America, where so-called the Christian America, prior to the writing of our Constitution, Princeton was founded as a school for ministers because Yale had already gone liberal. In the 1730s and 40s, Yale was already renouncing their Christian heritage. And Dartmouth was started because of Yale going liberal, and by 1790, They're burning the Bible on the Dartmouth campus. And according to J. Edwin Orr, the church historian, Christian groups on the Dartmouth campus are taking the minutes of their meetings in code because they were being harassed by non-Christian students. That's pretty early on in church history in terms of America. But where did the corruption come from? Not from without, not the other guys, but from us. And I think that applies here. Because remember, in our book, what I think is one of the key verses of the book is back in chapter three in verse 15, that Paul is writing that we know how to conduct ourselves in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar in support of the truth, how we are to live. And then in chapter 1, you remember, he is telling Timothy, upon my departure, verse 3, I've asked you to remain in Ephesus that you may instruct certain men not to teach strange doctrines, nor pay attention to myths and endless genealogies which give rise to speculation rather than furthering the administration of God, which is by faith But the goal of our instruction is love from a pure heart, a good conscience, and a sincere faith. For some men, strained from these things, have turned aside to fruitless discussion, wanting to be teachers of law, even though they do not understand either what they are saying or the matters about which they are making confident assertions." These teachers, have to be instructed to be silent because they're teaching in the church at Ephesus. In chapter four, he warns, not of those teachers, but of future teachers. Chapter four, Paul says, the Spirit explicitly says, in later times, some will fall away from the faith. paying attention to deceitful spirits and the doctrines of demons by means of the hypocrisy of liars seared in their own conscience. There is a coming a day when there will be these teachers who will be promoting deceitful doctrines of demons, and some will be led astray by the hypocrisy of those teachers. And now in the sixth chapter, he comes back again and says in verse three, if anyone advocates a different doctrine, heterodox doctrine, and I remember I told you this is what's called a first class condition. It's not if this happens, it's you could legitimately translate verse three, since there are some who are. And again, he's addressing people that fall within the pale or the veil of the local church. And so it's important for us to take seriously these things, not so that we can sniff out the heretics. We do want to do that. but that we do not become the purveyors of a false doctrine ourselves. And one of the ways that we do, both in the chapter one and here in this chapter, is by not agreeing with the sound words which come from the Lord Jesus and the doctrine conforming to godliness, but being taken up in these arguments As he says in verse 4, these morbid interest in controversial questions and disputes about words, out of which arise envy, strife, abusive language, evil suspicions, and constant friction between men. The things that we are to talk about are to promote and encourage godliness, not just disputes. And I think it's interesting that in my personal life, again, this is mostly just anecdotal. My life is not the, to be considered the standard by which everyone else's life should be measured. But in seminary, Bible school and seminary, one of the greatest things to do at night in the dorm rooms is argue over fine points of doctrine. And it's really sad when you get these 18, 19, 20, 24 year olds who don't really know a whole lot arguing so dogmatically about certain things. But we're rather supposed to allow our words to be encouraging and to build up, to be careful how we use our words to build up and encourage one another. And we're called to meditate, as Paul will say to the Philippians, upon the things that are pure and right and good and wholesome. and not to be constantly arguing and finding things to dispute about. There is a place for disputatos. There is a place for argumentation. But we need to understand that when our conversations tend to, on balance, fall on the side of being argumentative, and critical, highlighting the errors of others, causing friction, that we ourselves might be in that little boat drifting from the dock towards the middle of the lake. And so I want us to focus once again on this before we move on. Again, in verse three, if anyone or since there are those who advocate a different doctrine, It's important for us to understand that church history did not begin the moment you believed. And that's kind of the way we function. That church history began the moment you were converted. There are 2,000 years prior to your conversion, unless you're Ed Fuller, and then there was only 1,000 years before your conversion. And there's a lot that's gone on. There've been a lot of godly believers throughout the history of the church, just like you and me, who have remained faithful and worked hard and wrestled with the words of God. And I think I used this illustration recently, but I forget. I'm an old man. Church history was only 1,500 years. The church started 1,500 years before I was converted. No, I just forgot what my illustration was. See how old I am? It's easy for us to get caught up in thinking that things happened just now, but there's these 2,000 years. Now I remember. I think what I said to you before is when I started seminary, I asked the older brother who was involved in my coming to faith, a guy named Craig, I said, what happens if I get to seminary and I'm having to write a paper and I find some insight that's never been seen before? and he says it's probably wrong. Name the verse of the Bible that has not been poured over. That's not to say there isn't new things to learn. That's not to say there aren't deeper understandings. That's not to say that there's nothing more to explore. We have not found the bottom of any verse in the Bible, but we have found a general idea of the verses of the Bible. It's kind of like out in the ocean. We know where the ocean is. And we can tell you a lot about the ocean, but there's places in the ocean that we have not reached the bottom of. And there's still parts of the ocean that need to be explored. But when we get there, it's not going to overturn everything else we ever knew about the ocean. And so it is with the word of God. The word of God is deep. The word of God is rich and we have not exhausted it, but if you come up with something that's very new and novel, probably it's going astray. And so knowing the doctrines, the historical doctrines, remember Jude tells us that the faith, the faith, he uses the definite article, the faith, not faith as in the personal faith, the faith, the content of the scriptures have been delivered once and for all to the church. We do not believe that God is giving additional revelation this day. There's not a third book of Corinthians that will be written. There's not a Romans 2.0 that will soon be written. The Bible is sufficient, the Bible is perfect, the Bible is without error, the Bible is the word of God, and we are to study it carefully. But as he goes on to talk about these people, they do not agree with the sound words, those of our Lord Jesus Christ. And there are those who even in early church history begin to pervert the writings of Christ and the church. You will find as early as the second century, heretics who are teaching false things, and many of them start in the church. You find the Gnostic Gospels, like the Gospel of Peter and the Gospel of James and other writings that are out there, and disputing all sorts of things about Christ and his works. But it's interesting as the church history evolves, most of the careful crafting of our doctrines, all doctrine in the Bibles There, all right? But many of the careful articulation of the Gospels, for example, one that we use in our Lord's Day, the Nicene Creed, comes as a result of having to address heresies. The Nicene Creed is not scripture. The Nicene Creed is not inspired. It's not infallible. But the writing of that was because there were all sorts of groups, the Apollinarians, the Modalists, what would eventually become what we think of Jehovah Witnesses through Arius, the Arians, who were corrupting the view of who Jesus is. And the introduction into the church of non-canonical singing, means music other than the Psalms, was as a result of Arius. One of the ways in which Arius would pass his doctrines and spread so quickly throughout the church at that time was through little ditties that were easily sung, and they would have his view of Christ, and his view of Christ was, while he is God, he's only a demigod. God is here, and man is here, and Christ is somewhere in between. The church has always held that there was never a time in which the Son was not. Arius taught there was a time in which there was no son. And that doctrine spread rather quickly, and the Council of Nicaea is dealing with exactly the nature of who Christ is. Is he like God? Or is he of the same substance with God? That's at the heart of the confession of the Nicene Creed. He's very God of very God. He's of the same substance. Whatever makes God, God is found in Christ. And those things had to be carefully written and drafted because in local congregations, there were people like Arius and Apollinarius and Nestorius and others who were teaching false views. And so much of our creedal and confessional writings throughout the history of the church are there to address, to correct, to fight against the false teaching of these heretics. And so therefore, if we want to make sure that we are advocating sound doctrine, we need to know the doctrines, and we need to know some of the history of how we got to expressing the doctrines the way we did. Now, totally on a side, and it's, again, just for a moment of lightness, you know, December, some like to celebrate St. Nicholas, right? St. Nick. Did you know that St. Nick was at the Nicene Council? There really was a St. Nicholas who would later be connected with what we think of the St. Nick of Christmas. And good old St. Nick at the council, history tells us, cold cocked Arius. Oh, back when men were men. Arius says he was espousing his false view of Christ. Saint Nick gave him a good one to the chops. Now, I'm not recommending that as a way of solving doctrinal debates, but I just say that with a moment of liberty, that these truths were taken seriously, not casually. You'll hear people say today, you know, the doctrine of the Trinity doesn't really matter. Excuse me, if there's no doctrine of the Trinity, there is no Christianity. None, whatsoever. As I've told you on other occasions, under the context, Christianity is not first and foremost about a way you live. Does the Bible have a lot to say about how we ought to live? Yes. But the way we live comes from the way we believe. That's why Paul will write many of his letters, like Ephesians, the first three chapters are all doctrine. And the last three chapters are the application of the doctrine. Book of Romans, 11 chapters of doctrine. And then from chapter 12 to 16, application of doctrine. Same in the book of Colossians. What we believe shapes how we live. And I've said to you on other occasions, when you think of the time of the Reformation in the 16th century, there were long before Luther came along, there were many people who were calling for the Reformation of the church. John Wycliffe up in England back, I think was the 1200s was it? Was calling for a Reformation. Hus was calling for a Reformation 100 years before Luther. Even in Luther's time, there were others who were calling for reformation, such as Erasmus. And Erasmus' call for reformation in one of the great books of church history that you all should be familiar with and maybe read is In the Praise of Folly by Erasmus. Now he remains a diehard Roman Catholic, but in there you see a diehard Roman Catholic scholar showing you the corruption of the church of the 1500s. But the difference between Luther and Erasmus was that Luther understood true reformation comes from what you believe. Erasmus thought true reformation comes from changing behavior. Luther says you're gonna change behavior by changing how you live. I mean, excuse me, you change how you live by the renewing of the mind around sound doctrine. Think of Paul in Romans chapter 12. Be not conformed to the world, but be transformed, how? By a whole set of new rules and regulations. Isn't that what he said? No, but by the transforming and the renewing of your mind. that you might be able to discern the will of God. So you have two men who are equally calling for reformation. One, more rules, more regulations. One, return to sound doctrine. And here in our text, these false teachers are advocating a different doctrine. And that different doctrine, as we saw back in chapter four, will eventually affect the moral behavior of people. So the church is first and foremost a body that believes something. The Christian life starts with believing certain things. And from that, we move to how we live. We do not start with how we live and argue back to what we should believe. You always end up in a bad place there. And so they do not agree with the sound words, the healthy words, the life-giving words, those of our Lord Jesus Christ, and with the doctrine conforming to godliness. Now this is important because all true sound doctrine should enable you to live a better life, but it starts with the sound doctrine. And back in chapter one again, notice he says in verse five, the goal of our instruction, the goal of our doctrinal teaching is not so that you can refute that subgroup of Christianity who disagrees with you. I remember a professor in seminary, Dr. Hanna, used to say, you know, why do we study theology? And he was a great, I think almost all of his academics was in Europe or the Middle East. And he would say, so he taught very differently. He didn't, he asked a lot of questions of the students. And lectures were there, but oftentimes they came after him inquiring of the students what they would believe. He said, why do we study doctrine? And he said, you know, after the students would answer, he says, you know, really all you've answered is that so we can sniff out the heretics. He says, we study doctrine in order that we might know how to live before God and how we might more faithfully introduce the gospel to those around us. But Paul says the goal of our instruction, the goal of our doctrinal teaching, the goal of our preaching, the goal of our instruction is love from a pure heart, a good conscience, and a sincere faith. For some men strain from these things. Their teaching is not that we might love God with all of our heart and our neighbor as ourselves, but to be able to sniff out the heretics. to be able to draw the lines to show how everyone else is deficient. And that type of attitude starts in local churches. So some men strain from these things, have turned aside to fruitless discussions, wanting to be teachers of the law, even though they do not understand what they are saying or matters about which they make confident assertions. They're very confident in what they're saying, but they don't even understand the law. I told you I've only been in one real formal debate, and by formal debate I mean there was a moderator, there were questions that were to be asked between me and another fellow, and it had to do with the difference between Reformed and New Covenant theology and the role of the law in the life of the believer. And the other fellow's position was that the law had no role in the life of the believer. At least the law of Moses, 10 commandments were of no value to you. You only needed the law of Christ. And I remember, the biggest thing I remember of that debate is I learned I never want to do another debate. Oh, that wore me out. That was so hard, took so much time to prep. But the proper use of the law is embedded in the scripture itself. And the very vocabulary, I mean, the Hebrew vocabulary of Torah, Mishpach, and Hoke, those words help us understand the nuances of the law. So when you're reading the Old Testament and you come, law and commandments and precepts, three different Hebrew words, but they're all there intentionally to help you understand the law. Look at Psalm 119, how often the author of that psalm will say, Give me understanding to your law. He knew the Ten Commandments. He could recite them in the original Hebrew. And yet repeatedly, give me understanding to your law. Again, this is one of those deep places of the ocean. But these people in Ephesus are making confident assertions about the law. Exactly how does the law of Moses apply to us today? And so we need to know, we need to be aware that we are the ones who can drift. Number two, we need to understand that we have an absolute necessity to understand sound doctrines, sound words. It's not optional. And one of the measures in which we can say we have understood our doctrine is that it will, Ephesians 6.3, begin to conform our lives to godliness. Doctrine leads to godliness, not godliness leading to sound doctrine. And these people, he goes on to say, are conceited and understand nothing. Conceited, they're puffed up. The word conceited means to be puffed up, prideful, arrogant. They're smarter than anybody else. I know, I've been there, been there, done that. To my shame, some of my friends in seminary said, replace the word dogmatic with the word dogmatic. Can you imagine such a thing? Little old me. And one fellow once said, you know, If I ever got in a theological argument, I'd want Doug on my side. And at the time, I thought, that's cool. Now I go, that's sad. I mentioned, I think, yesterday in the men's group that one Christian songwriter talked about my high-powered doctrine gun. What do you do with a high-powered rifle? Kill things with it. Our doctrine should lead to godliness. It should reform our marriages, our parenting, our relationship to our neighbors, Christian and non-Christian, reform how we relate to one another, that our words might be measured with grace to encourage and to build up according to the need of the moment. Our doctrine should affect the way that we live. And this is so much on the heart of the Apostle Paul. And that we would live in such a way that we would renounce immorality and impurity and passion and evil desires. And then it goes on to say they have this morbid interest. And the word for morbid, again, is a sickness. The Greek word for morbid there is a sickness, a disease. We're consumed with controversial questions. And as a result of that, we get in disputes about words. out of which arise envy and strife, abusive language and evil suspicions, and this constant friction. Rather than the congregation being one of love and encouragement, where the conversations we have are meant to build up and enrich, even when we have to go in private to confront a brother, Matthew 18, it's done not in abusive language or in friction, but in love, in commitment to one another, to lift up, to build up, to help each other walk more faithfully, not the tearing down. But I really wanted to focus for the rest of this and really the heart of what I wanted to say this morning happens in verse five, this constant friction between men of depraved mind and deprived of the truth. who suppose that godliness is a means of religion. I'll probably come back on the godliness part next week, because I think in verse six, this theme continues in a positive sense. But I would encourage you, as you read through the book this week, replace the word godliness, both there at the end of verse five and beginning of verse six, with the word religion. It's a legitimate alternative translation. Some translations have it that way. But the godliness he's talking about is the religious life. And they're supposing that somehow religion is a means of gain. But we'll focus more on that later. I want to focus on this men of depraved mind and deprived of the truth. One of the things that is often overlooked in the way that we consider the effect of sin is what I've told you in other occasions, is what's called the noetic effect of sin. How many are familiar with it? Noeo is a Greek word for I think. Nous is the mind. And part of the effect of sin which affects every part of the human body and soul, includes the mind. And we've illustrated that with Adam in the garden. Remember, prior to the eating of the fruit, God walks in the day with them and communicates with them. Everything's good. He's naked, he's with his wife, there's no shame. And then they eat of the fruit and his eyes are opened, right? And all of a sudden, nothing in the garden has changed other than Adam and Eve. The garden is as exactly it was before he ate the fruit. Now they've eaten the fruit, what happens? He hears God walking in the cool of the day, and for the very first time, he has a new emotion. Based upon his auditory assessment of some data, God's in the garden, now he's afraid. A feeling that he never had. He looks at his wife, and rather than seeing the love of his wife, he realizes they're naked, and they become what? Ashamed. And then they, on basis of what? Nothing's changed in terms of what he's seeing, but how he processes what he sees, how he thinks about what he hears, and what he sees changes. And so on the basis of the changing of thinking, what does he do? He hides. He doesn't run to God, help. He hides from God. Because God is no longer a good God who has blessed him with all of the riches of the garden, he's to be feared. And this is the noetic effect of sin. And you and I are born with that. We've inherited that corruption of the human nature. so that from the moment of conception, you do not process the world and God the way you were created or Adam was created to do so. In 2 Timothy 3.8, for example, using the same word as depraved mind here, he'll say, just as Janus and Jambres opposed Moses, so these men opposed the truth, men of depraved mind rejected as regards to the faith. Janus and Jambres are considered to be some of the Egyptian priests that are doing battle with Moses when he's doing the 10 miracles. And they are seeing the miracles. And rather than turning and saying to Pharaoh, God is here, Moses is the prophet, let's rend our shirts, humble ourselves, repent and believe, they continue to oppose him. They're seeing the same data that you read about with the frogs and the locusts and the angel of death. But does it lead them to repentance? No, it leads them to all the more oppose. Paul will write similarly in Titus chapter one, to the pure, all things are pure, but to those who are defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure, but both their mind and their conscience are defiled. The mind and the conscience. The mind, the place, the heart of your thinking, your processing, and the conscience of your understanding whether you've done something right or wrong. When you're young, your conscience is tender. And so little kids, they do something wrong, and they break one of the house rules, and they will change their behavior. My mom was always good at knowing when I would come in the back door, she'd take one look at me, says, okay, what have you done? How'd she know that? because it changed, my conscience was pricked and so I walk in and I walk a little differently, hopefully she won't notice me. And every kid does this. And eventually your conscience learns more sophisticated ways of hiding and covering up your sense of guilt. But Paul says, the unbelieving have both their mind and their conscience defiled. And this will be a repeated theme throughout scriptures. Remember, for example, in John 3, Jesus will speak of the non-Christian. He says, this is the judgment that light has come into the world and men loved the darkness rather than the light for their deeds were evil. And everyone who does evil hates the light and does not come to the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. So the non-Christian loves darkness. He has an affection and an affinity towards darkness because of his sin. Jesus will speak elsewhere that, you know, I try to speak the truth to you and you can't hear it. In John chapter 5, as he's confronting the Pharisees, and you search the scriptures because you think in them you have eternal life. It is these that testify about me, and you're unwilling to come to me so that you may have life. I do not receive glory from men, but I know you, that you do not love God in yourselves. I have come in the Father's name and you do not receive me. If another one comes on his own name, you'll receive him. How can you believe when you receive glory from one another and do not seek the glory which is from the one and only God? Do not think that I will accuse you before the Father. The one who accuses you is Moses in whom you have set your hope. For if you believed Moses, you would have believed me, for he wrote about me. But if you do not believe the things written, how will you believe my words? Search the scriptures. The scriptures talk about who? Christ. Remember in Luke 24, Jesus will say to his disciples, Moses, the prophets, and the Psalms wrote about me. The Pharisees know the scriptures, and do they find Christ? No, they want to kill Christ. How is it that they could read the same Moses, the same Jeremiah, the same Psalms of David that you do and come to the conclusion from those scriptures, we must kill this man? Where does that come from? He will say later in the gospel, John, you can't understand the truth. And therefore, you cannot believe on me. You can't understand the truth. Paul will put it this way in Ephesians, in the fourth chapter, he will say, In verse 17, this I say and affirm together with the Lord, that you walk no longer, just as the Gentiles also walk, in the futility of their mind. What was futile about their mind? Being darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart. and they having become callous have given themselves over to sensuality." Notice how the mind and its ability to interact or not interact with truth precedes the giving over of themselves to the immorality. But why does Paul write this? I say and affirm together with the Lord that you that you walk no longer just as the Gentiles. Who's he writing to? He's writing to believers. Why does he have to write these things to believers? Because it's possible for Christian believers to walk like the unelect or the unredeemed or the unbeliever. Back to Hebrews 2 and the drifting. Just for argument of sake, let's say everyone in this room is genuinely, certifiably, infallibly converted, 100% of us. Let's just say that, let's give that for sake of conversation. It's still possible for one or more of us, or all of us, to choose to walk according to the Gentiles in the futility of their mind. Or as Paul will say to the Corinthians repeatedly, that the things of, in 1 Corinthians, the things of God and salvation are to the non-Christian and to the Jew foolishness. 1 Corinthians 1.18, for the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing. It's possible for Christians to start to think that the word of the cross is foolishness. I have witnessed that. A good friend of mine, well, maybe a good acquaintance of mine, who taught a lot of youth workers and how to have a great commission-oriented youth ministry, would eventually start to write how to have a great commission-oriented church. And I sat in one of his conferences one time and he spoke, I'm not making this up, God is my witness, the one thing that you wanna do if you wanna grow a healthy, vibrant church is not talk about, quote, the blood of Jesus, end quote. Because that will turn off the non-Christian. Really? Because the word of the cross is foolishness. He'll go on to say, the Jews ask for signs, the Greeks search for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified to the Jews, a stumbling block to the Gentiles' foolishness. Why is it foolishness? Because of the hardness of their mind and the darkness of their understanding, which you and I share by right of sons and daughters of Adam and Eve. Now in regeneration, we have a new mind and a new heart. But just like every other aspect of regeneration and sanctification, it's not complete in this life. There's an ongoing growth in that. So as Paul will say in Romans 7, the very good thing he wants to do, he doesn't do, and the very thing he hates, he ends up doing, wretched man that I am. We know the stratagems of the devil in 2 Corinthians 4. Paul talks about us having, well, in chapter two, he talks about having this great ministry of the new covenant and who's adequate for these things. And he'll talk about our adequacy is from God in chapter three, verse six, who's made us adequate as servants of the new covenant, not the letter, but the spirit. But he goes on to say that having this ministry of proclaiming the gospel, he says, That even if the gospel is veiled, it's veiled to those who are perishing. Why is it veiled to those who are perishing? Because in the fall of Adam, the noetic effect of sin, the effect that sin had upon the mind of Adam and therefore all of his children, apart from regeneration, is that the truth of God is veiled. And the devil knows that, and he uses that to his advantage. So even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing, in whose case the God of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. For we do not preach ourselves, but Christ Jesus as Lord, and ourselves as the bondservant for Jesus' sake. For God said, for God who said, let light shine in darkness is the one who has shown in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. But we have this treasure in earth and vessels, so the surpassing greatness, the power will be of God and not ourselves. So you're sharing the gospel to folks. Same time, same message, and one goes, yes, life, and the other one gets angry or laughs, scoffs. Why? Why one responding positively and one negatively? Was it because one was smarter? No. Was it because one was more religious? No. Was it because one chose to? Well, yes, but why? Just say he chose still doesn't answer the question. Why did he choose that? And why did this other dolt not? Was he less religious, less intelligent, less fervent? No, both, apart from Christ, Ephesians 4 that we just read, have their minds and understanding darkened. And this is why Jesus says in Matthew, excuse me, John 3 to Nicodemus, you can't even see heaven, much less go to it, unless you are what? Born again. Born anew. Passed from death to life. With a new mind and a new heart, promised in the new covenant. And so as you're proclaiming the gospel, the gospel goes forward. And God in his mercy and grace causes one to be born again that he might hear and understand and not be like his first father, Adam, and hide, but embrace the truth and run to God and embrace Christ and to trust. And the other, who is still related in his mind to Adam, hears the same truth and does what Adam did and rejects the truth and hides from it. All right, so that's how people get saved. But now, as I've been saying, you and I, we're already saved. Remember the congregation, we said, for the sake of conversation, we're all redeemed. The noetic effect of sin stays with us until we bury old Adam in the graveyard. It's only when we bury the old man at the graveyard that we'll finally be freed from the ongoing war within dwelling sin that Satan takes advantage of. I could go on so long and I see the time's going. Here's a question for you to ponder. In our modern world, we talk about mental illness, which actually we think about as a pretty stupid statement. The mind does not get sick. The brain might, but here's the question for you to ponder. Where does the brain start and stop and the mind begin? They're not the same, are they? Brother so-and-so dies today, we go out to the cemetery and we bury him. We put into the ground a brain, amongst other things, Right? We bury the body, which contains the brain. But Paul tells us to be absent from the body is to be present where? With the Lord. And you will have a mind there, because you will see him as he is, and you will be immediately transformed. And you read in, say, Revelation 4 and 5 of these saints that have already gone, who are praising the Lord and ascribing glory and honor. They are mentally very active. So the mind and the brain are not the same thing. They're meant to work together. But in the corruption of our flesh, the noetic effect of sin, the corruption of your brain and your mind, your brain as part of your body has all sorts of corruptions to it. But so does your mind. That's why the new covenant promises you a new mind and a new heart. But this side of the grave where we put the old Adam once and for all six feet under because the person has died and now they're freed from all the ravishings of sin upon the mind and the body and the soul and all that. We were redeemed by Christ. We are saved by Christ. Our sins have been forgiven. We've been given a new mind and a new heart. But go back to Romans 7. The struggle the apostle Paul has is a real struggle. Peter talks about it in 1 Peter 2, that the lust of the flesh which wage war against your soul, that is an ongoing struggle. That struggle will not be over until we lay old Adam in the grave. Until then, your brain sometimes works against the new mind. And that's not fixed. The reason for reading 2 Corinthians 4, it's not fixed by taking a couple antidepressants. Nor is it fixed by hearing a really great lecture. It's heard by the powerful preaching of the law and gospel where God, the power, the surpassing greatness of the power is from God to come and work in you in such a way that as Paul says in 2 Corinthians, that the gospel is no longer veiled, the blinded mind is no longer blind, you are now able to to not only believe in the light of the gospel, the glory of Christ, you are able spiritually to apprehend the glory of God in the light of the knowledge of the glory, to behold the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. That's not an intellectual thing. It has intellectual implications to be sure, but that's a spiritual thing. And on this side of the grave, this side of our salvation on one hand, and the grave on the other, there's this ongoing battle that we have, where we better not just be pointing the fingers at all the other people who are so wrong. But we, Hebrews 2, must take time to consider, am I tied to the dock? Or am I, as he says in 1 Timothy 6, am I the one who actually is embracing the sound doctrines of the word of Christ? Is my life more and more being conformed to godliness because of the great doctrines in which I believe or because of the laws of men who say, do this, don't do that, taste this, don't taste that? Is my life one in which I am taken up with a morbid interest in controversial questions and disputes, and so much of my life is one of constant friction? Am I a man of becoming a man more and more of depraved mind? Have I in all my theological debates actually deprived myself of the truth? which should be producing godliness in me, but it just produces arguments and accusations and frictions with other people." I think this is one reason why the New Testament puts so much emphasis on the reality of false teachers, because not only are they prevalent but the prevalency of them comes from within local congregations. It's been that way from the beginning. It will be that way until the return of the Lord Jesus Christ. Or in the old cartoon, Pogo, who said, we have met the enemy, and it is us. We must take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. And we must help one another to love the truth, embrace the truth, to understand the truth, to pray for each other, to encourage one another. And the hallmarks of the Christian life will be one of where our words are meant to build up, not to tear down, to encourage, not to debase, to love and not to argue. And that's something that each one of us should constantly be evaluating with ourselves and helpful with one another, so that our speech, whenever we speak, it's always been seasoned with a little bit of salt and a lot of grace, and our words leave the people we are with encouraged in Christ, enriched in Christ, ready to walk more godly for the glory of Christ. There is a mind that's been saturated with truth, embracing the truth, and using truth for its intended end. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you that our hope is never in ourselves. The power of the Christian life is not of ourselves. It is the power of God, the gospel, the power of God into salvation. Grant us to take an honest look at ourselves, that we might all the more be conformed to the godliness that you call us to, that you have provided for us in Christ, and that we might in love work to encourage one another in these things. In Christ we pray, amen.