I began my talk yesterday with a citation, and I think it's appropriate that I begin my sermon with the same citation. But before I say that, I just want to say how much I'm so happy to be among you. I feel so much at home at Grace and appreciate so much the work of James and all the other men here. You are so fortunate. to have such a solid community of believers. And everyone depends upon you as well, so keep being faithful to this community. But I began yesterday with a sort of discouraging citation, which I discovered when I brought my family back from France. We had been laboring in a secular culture where people don't talk about spirituality. It's just all very rationalistic and secular. And we came back to the States full of enthusiasm that now we were going to come to Christian America and my kids could go to Christian schools and have all that wonderful Christian influence upon them. And then I found this statement from a professor at the University of Virginia, which he said 25 years ago, listen to it. The ferocity of the current assault on the legacy of Christian culture has brought a new clarity of vision. The alternatives are set before us with unusual starkness. Either there will be a genuine renewal of Christian culture, there is no serious alternative, Or we will be enveloped by the darkness of paganism in which the worship of the true God is abandoned and forgotten. Well, you can imagine that got me thinking about what was happening in America. And I started to study and I came up with some of the material that we were dealing with yesterday. It's so good to know that we're not inventing anything, that this is not abnormal. As the Apostle Paul shows at the end of chapter of 1 Timothy, we are always involved in a battle for the truth. You know, last year we celebrated the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, and you would think that we could sit back on our laurels and enjoy the incredible success of the gospel in Europe, which changed the face of Europe. But I admire Luther for his realism. You know, after, I think it was four years, from nowhere he became the most published figure in Europe. Did that send him off on some crazy notion of his own importance and great success? Here's what he says. Remember in that wonderful hymn, Ein Festerberg ist unter Gott. For still our ancient foe doth seek to work as woe. His craft and power are great, and armed with cruel hate on earth is not his equal. What an insight. And of course, this is what the apostle Paul is saying in this text. Do you notice the reading? Now the spirit expressly says, then in later times, some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and the teaching of demons. And so Paul is warning us to be aware that while you have truth, The opposite of truth is always lurking, trying to undermine the truth. He says in 2 Timothy 3, 1, understand in the last days there will come times of difficulty. The difficulty, by the way, is the struggle for truth. I don't know whether you noticed, it's very difficult because it's in English, but in these six verses, there are two phrases. One is the statement concerning a certain kind of teaching, and then another kind of teaching, the teaching of demons in verse one. It's the Greek term didaskalia, and it stands out in the Greek because it reappears in verse six as the good teaching of Jesus Christ. Didaskalia, it's the same term. And so you have these two opposing notions face to face. And then Paul says to Timothy, the young pastor, if you put these things before the brothers, you will be a good servant of Jesus Christ. Do you see what he's saying? The church has to realize that there are two kinds of teaching, and it's not wrong to talk about them from the pulpit. It's right to set us all clearly as to what's being involved. Paul did this in a number of places and we talked yesterday about a text that Paul wrote in Romans 1.25 where he warns us that there are two kinds of teaching. One is the truth and the other is the lie. So, we are faced, you see, always with this massive confrontation between what is true and what is false, what is the lie. And that particular way he says it in Romans 1.25 is, they exchanged the truth about God for the lie and worshiped and served the creation rather than the creator who is blessed forever. Do you see there? Also two options, the teaching of demons and the good teaching of Jesus Christ, right here in Romans 1.25. And so Paul is telling Timothy to declare what is the lie and then what is the truth. Now you might think that Paul is going overboard when he says people will depart from the faith devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and the teaching of demons through the insincerity of liars, whose consciences are seared, and then he talks about vegetarianism and celibacy. Is it that bad? What is going on here? Well, I think we have to scratch the surface of these terms to figure out exactly what the temptation of the believers were in those days, and believe it or not, they're still ours. because forbidding his marriage is actually a rejection of normative spirituality. We know better than God the creator who created heterosexual marriage, says Paul, about these people. They want to propose a different view of sexuality. And then, of course, the abstinence from foods is simply a symbolic rejection of God the Creator, expressed in various natural things. So we're actually being faced in this text, in Paul's terminology, with a form of what we call Gnosticism. Now, from the pulpit, it's not good to use long words like that, but let me just put you at ease. Gnosticism is the rejection of God the Creator. All right? It's very simple. It's just like in Romans 125. You don't worship the Creator, you worship the creation. And that's what the Gnostics did. They worshiped the creation in a specific sense in believing that they held God within them. They didn't need to have an exterior creator because God was within them. And that's why they were so spiritual. That kind of spirituality, of course, is alive for us today. And we're seeing all kinds of strange developments. One is in the evangelical church, people are rejecting the Reformation. They're rejecting the five solas. And they want to keep one soul, a soulless Jesus. But then, what do they mean by Jesus? It's whoever Jesus means to them, so they can build their own theology. At the time of the Reformation, the question that the evil spirits brought to people was how do I save myself by my good deeds? But the devil's clever, he's always changing the question a little bit. It's always fundamentally the same, but the question in our day is, how do I define my personal identity? And how does sexuality relate to the gospel? This is the big issue in our time, as you know. It's such a big issue, we can't even speak about it. You won't dare to speak about it, will you? In public. It has been made such a volatile issue, but that's where the gospel is being attacked in our time. And it's a typical attack by just the way the ancient Gnostics did on the flesh. The Gnostics rejected the body and they went for the spirit. Today's Gnostics are rejecting the objectivity of the body, what our biology tells us. We don't want to listen to that. We'll invent our own identity. And the implications for the rejection of the body are actually enormous. Even for the gospel, in 3.16, Paul gives a statement about orthodoxy, and he talks about Christ, that he appeared in the flesh. That's a fundamental element of the gospel in the first century. And so, people who denied the the creation denied that Jesus came in the flesh. They thought he was just a spirit. And, uh, they rejected then everything that happened, including the crucifixion. And that wonderful song we just sang about the resurrection because there was no flesh to be resurrected. It wasn't important. And, uh, We find the same kind of false teaching in 2 John, who is also dealing with these ancient Gnostics, which we now are finding all around the place. For many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not confess the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh. That again is the theme. So this business about simply eating habits and celibacy, you see, reveal something much deeper. And indeed, at the end of 1 Timothy, Paul actually talks about gnosis. He talks about, he uses the word gnosis that people are following. So this is deep apostasy. It's rejecting God the creator and the flesh, and thus rejecting the Redeemer and His incarnation and work of death and resurrection for us. This rejection of God the Creator is all around us today. It doesn't always use the same ancient Gnostic terms, but, you know, many of us are becoming Hindus. and we're believing in maya. Maya tells us that the physical things are illusions and that we have God within and that that's how we will be spiritual. But it's very funny how consistent are people who reject the flesh. They tell me, if you're in Mumbai and a truck is coming down the road at a tremendous speed, you jump out of the way. That's how seriously you don't really believe that the flesh is merely an illusion. But we are buying into this stuff ourselves. You know, a six foot two male tells you that he believes he's a woman and he's now become a six year old girl and is adopted by an older couple. And he lives out the rest, even though he has four children, he lives out the rest of his life as a six year old girl. Who's he fooling? Does anyone really believe this stuff? It's, again, pure maya that is being passed on to us and our culture as really, eventually, the source of truth. And so we must be aware of what is happening. Paul goes into some detail about what is happening in that first chapter of Romans, as I said, where he helps us to understand what the teaching of demons is all about. And he talks about theology, spirituality, and sexuality in Romans 1. And I recommend that you take some time to read that this afternoon just to check me. But what are the lies that the demons tell about the person of God, theology? Well, they reject the truth. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. and they believe that the earth is divine. They exchange the truth about God for the lie and worship the earth as divine. That's demonic. That's why Paul can get so emotive about the issues because that's precisely what the devil was convincing our forefathers of in the past, that God is not worthy of being recognized as the author of creation. The teaching of demons is shown also in what is said about spirituality. It's the rejection of what God said, you shall have no other gods before me, or make for yourselves graven images. Rather, in verse 23 of Romans 1, we read, they exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images, and exchanged the glory for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. Now, you don't actually have to create a graven image. You can still just worship creation anyway without the image, but I'm convinced we'll probably see more and more images in our future day as we see developing this worship of creation. And then the teaching of demons, says Paul, is reflected in what people believe about their own sexuality. In Genesis, we have the truth, namely that God created man male and female. But in Romans 1, we have the unnatural reflection that comes out of a rejection of God the Creator and of normative spirituality and translates itself into an embodiment of all that in a misuse of the body sexually. And so Paul begins to describe the act of homosexuality as an expression of this teaching of demons. So we are definitely in a world that's very similar to the world that Paul describes. Now, when you talk about homosexuality, it obviously gets you criticized that you're picking on homosexuals. No. Homosexuality is no more sinful than other sins, but it is a reflection of that whole process of the rejection of God the Creator and of a false spirituality. And so we Christians must find a way of expressing the truth that brings glory to God and honors His name. And so that teaching of demons must be opposed, says Paul, by the good teaching of Jesus Christ. And what does that mean? Well, it means that we teach that God is the good creator. Paul says in chapter four, for everything created by God is good and is to be received with thanksgiving. Are you thankful for who you are? Are you thankful for the person God has made you? Are you thankful that God is the creator? Food and marriage, you see, are good because they're made by God. And we must be thankful for what God has done. Pagan says, Paul, do not give thanks in Romans 121. So scripture teaches us that foundational to the biblical revelation is God the creator. And that when God created, he made the world holy. That's a wonderful notion. I'd better get my little phrase in here before I leave you today. Yesterday we were talking about one-ism and two-ism. And one-ism is the worship of everything in this world. And two-ism is actually the worship of God who is separate from the world. So there are two kinds of beings in our reality. One is God the creator and the other is you. And you are not the creator and you never will be. If anyone tells you one day you'll be God, they're telling you a lie. Because the only way to be God is to be the creator of everything. So, that term, twoism, I find it throughout scripture now in terms of the term holiness. Because holiness means separate, set apart, right? In different things. Appropriate things that relate to one another, like males and females, right? And we talk about holy matrimony because God created that as an expression of the holiness of himself as separate from us. God in his place is holy, but you know what? We in our places are holy as well. And so we need to understand the world that way and to understand that we are in a massive struggle for the truth. And we were talking yesterday about evangelism and how you share your faith. And I was humbly trying to say that maybe our past efforts about evangelism have failed to emphasize God the Creator. You probably remember some of the methods. Did they ever speak about God the Creator? Did they begin with God the Creator as the Bible does? Anyway, I think it's just good for us now in this day and age where that doctrine is being fundamentally opposed that we discover ways how we can speak the gospel regarding God the Creator. But what is the relationship between the Creator and God the Redeemer? Well, the relationship is that God who created things, physical things, and the body actually then incarnates himself in a human body, thereby rendering for all to see that the body is holy and uses the body to save us. So that's why it's important that we can say that the Creator came in the flesh in the person of the Son. So those who reject the coming of Jesus in the flesh, you see, are actually rejecting God the Creator and that it is the Creator who comes in the person of Jesus to save us. What an incredible message that is. Oh, hi folks, I didn't see you over there. I didn't quite turn that way. Sorry. I'm glad you're here. But you see, the gospel message is absolutely tied up with the understanding of the relationship between God the Creator and God the Redeemer. And we read about that in all these statements about the importance of the flesh. Remember what John 1 says, John 1, 14 says, and the word became flesh and dwelt among us. See how important the flesh is to the gospel message. See how important the flesh is to the Bible and see how important the flesh must be to you. You are called to accept who you are made in God's image and live that out in front of the people who've rejected it. For God has done what the law weakened by the flesh, the fallen flesh, could not do by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, but in true flesh He condemns sin in the flesh, so that we can know the redemption of our flesh as we use it to serve the Lord. Well, you didn't know this, but I had two points. And now I'm at my third point, which is the last point. In fact, I didn't know I had two points either. No, actually, one was the teaching of the demons, and then the good teaching of Jesus Christ. My last point is an exhortation to you which flows out of this epistle, because the goal of Paul's teaching is that we make a good confession. Paul's goal in this epistle was to exhort believers to make a good confession. Listen to what he says to Timothy. I charge you, Timothy, my child, in accordance with the prophecies previously made about you, that by them you may wage a good warfare, holding faith and a good conscience. Or he says in 612, fight the good fight of faith. take hold of eternal life to which you were called and about which you made a good confession in the presence of many enemies." Who made the good confession? It was Jesus, wasn't it? Jesus, standing before Pilate, made the good confession. And this, I believe, is what we are called to do as well. Perhaps the reason why we do not have unmitigating success in our time is because Jesus didn't have it either. And that we need to understand what it means to make a good confession in our day. So we must follow our Savior. Hold fast to the truth against unbelieving demonic opposition. Focus our eyes on Jesus. I love the way Luther finishes that hymn of his, did we in our own strength confide our striving would be losing. We're not the right man on our side, the man of God's own choosing. Thus ask who that may be. Christ Jesus, it is he. The Lord sabbath His name from age to age the same, and He must win the battle. Let's pray. Father, we thank You for this rousing text that calls us to action and to making a good confession. Lord, give us strength as we understand the distinctions between truth and falsehood. And as we understand how to live that out in our own lives, we pray this in the name of our good confessor, Jesus our Savior. Amen.