So what we're gonna do today is kind of make our own chain reference Bible. And if you just brought an electronic Bible, then use the back of the bulletin to write these notes on and this will be hopefully helpful to you. But we wanna talk today about the second great deceiver. And hopefully we all know who the great deceiver is, but you kind of wonder what that second great deceiver is. And for some of you, I don't know how many of you are aware of this, today is, what is today? Everybody know what today is? Somebody say it louder. It's Groundhog Day. Did you all not wake up wanting to know what Punxsutawney Field said today? I know that was the burning question on my mind, and the fact is this was such a big deal. Of course, there's a picture there at the bottom right that was from this morning. They brought Punxsutawney Phil out of his little hole in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, and the good news is he did not see a shadow, which means we're going to have an early spring. If you were worried about that, springtime is on its way. I don't know how this tradition got started and I don't know how good his record is. I think spring still comes on the same day every year regardless of what he does. But they say we're gonna have an early spring there. So it's interesting, a number of years ago they actually made a movie about this phenomena and Bill Murray plays a newscaster who goes to Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania to cover this story he doesn't think is worth his time. He has a horrific attitude about it, and somehow or other, he is sentenced to live the same day over and over and over again until he finally transforms his character. And I'm not necessarily recommending the movie, but I brought this up because I know at least Dr. Maria has heard what I'm gonna say before. I don't think any of the rest of you have, but I recently had the opportunity to preach to the Indian church, and I wanted to bring this same message again, but this time have some slides to go with it. But, you know, it's interesting because at least three times this last week I heard news commentators commenting on the impeachment proceedings, and they kept referring to Groundhog Day. And the reason they did so is because they felt like every day they were waking up and it was the same news, the same accusations, the same arguments, and that we really were wasting time. in the country. Now, I'll just give you my personal opinion. I think this is the most honest picture you'll ever see because none of these three people are happy, and we know it's honest because they don't have their mouths open. If they were, it would be, there would be lies in the picture. But these are, you know, some unhappy people, and every day we've had Groundhog Day, hearing the same story over and over again. But, you know, shouldn't governments always tell you the truth? I mean, they should, shouldn't they? I mean, we can absolutely rely on governments. Let's talk about coronavirus for just a moment. I know that's on everyone's thought, and I meant to put a picture of the virus here. It looks kind of like it's got little studs on it, like some crowns in ancient times did. And that's, corona means crown, and that's why it's called the coronavirus. It started in the Wuhan province in China in a market where kind of animals were sold for public consumption, that is eating. And the virus originated with a snake and it transferred from snake to a human. And then right now, and this is the statistics as of this morning, so these are very current statistics. There are 11,411 confirmed cases. I think at the start of the week, there were only 4,400 and something. So we see there's been another 7,000 people infected this week in China. Japan, 20 confirmed cases. Thailand, 19. Singapore, 18. Korea, 15. You get down to the United States. So far, eight confirmed cases. Recently, the United States government flew over, got Americans out of the Wuhan province. brought them back and they're quarantined in Air Force Base out in California. One of those people who was infected tried to escape and the authorities brought that individual back and they're remaining in quarantine until they're sure that there's no contagious diseases still left there from the coronavirus. I think Taiwan has about five confirmed cases as of this morning. So you see it's primarily still in China. And the Chinese government is telling us that this thing's under control. We don't need to worry about it. But there's something called the R-naught value. It's designated with an R with a small zero next to it. And the R-naught value tells you how many people are likely to be infected. And as of this morning, the R-naught value had been raised. Earlier it was like 2.5. It's been raised to 4.08. What that means is that each infected person is likely to infect four more people that will get sick and have the coronavirus themselves. And it doesn't take long till this is kind of a devastating thing. And I know you probably can't read that chart up there, but across the top of that chart are numbers 1 through 20, and these are cycles of the virus, how many people are infected, and the first cycle would be the nine to 10 days it takes for the coronavirus to get you infected, to basically come to fruition in your life, and you start having symptoms, and then you infect the next person. And what you need to notice there is if you look at that bottom row of numbers, it shows that at a R-naught value of four, which is what we're at right now, that after 10 cycles, there will be 262,144 people or over a quarter of a million people affected. And at 20 cycles, you're looking at the numbers are 275 billion people will be infected by the virus. Now that's kind of a big number. I think you can agree. And it's just math, really. Now, what can change the math? Well, can we change it by You know, quarantining people and certainly that seems to help. The R0 value actually took a slight dip this week because it seems like some of the quarantine procedures are helping. By the way, if there's a place you can go, they will actually show you a map of all the planes that are in the air at any given time. And there's still plenty of planes flying over China. I would prefer to look at a map of China and not see any planes. But I looked the other day and I looked on Friday and there were probably 100, 120 planes in the air over mainland China at that time. So in spite of the fact they have cities quarantined, there's still plenty of travel going around. So I think it's inevitable that the virus is going to continue to spread further. Now, by the way, just so I don't leave you being fearful for the rest of the sermon about the virus, there is some good news. There are no documented cases of coronavirus in individuals under the age of 14. That's kind of interesting. So it affects older people. Kids seem to not be getting it, which is something to be grateful for. That may not stay the same. Viruses have a tendency to mutate. And it's also true that people that were well and good immune system before they got infected, they tend to recover and be well, find the people that are dying. I think last night I saw 279 people had died. Those are people typically whose immune systems was already compromised or they already had respiratory issues of some kind. But I just, I find it fascinating that the Chinese government is saying it's under control. And, of course, our own government has been telling us, under control, don't worry about it. However, our government did take some actions this week. They said that Chinese nationals will not be allowed into our country if they come from mainland China. So that's effective today at, I think, 4 p.m. Eastern time. We're no longer allowing Chinese nationals into the country until the virus is over. So that's kind of an interesting And the World Health Organization has now declared a national emergency. President Trump has declared it a national emergency. So at least some people are going after it. But, you know, it's hard to believe politicians. So, you know, we might be tempted to think that maybe that's the second greatest deceiver. But if you look at the cover of your bulletin, I think you can probably figure out who the greatest deceiver is because obviously the person on the front of your bulletin is deceiving himself and that's who the second greatest deceiver is, it's ourselves. There are things we do to fool ourselves and things that we do. So what I want to do is teach you how to create a chain reference in your Bible and this is a task, something I've done for a lot of years and I have a number of these in my Bible. And it's always interesting when I find one of these verses that was in my chain reference, I start tracking down the other verses, and I can easily remember what the topic was. And it's like having a Bible study that you haven't had in years come back and go through all again. There was actually a Bible called the Thompson Chain Reference Bible, and it had notes in the margins about other verses on the same topic. So if you were looking at a verse and there was a chain reference to it, you could go to other references about that. So we're gonna kinda do that ourself. Let me describe how we're gonna do it, and then I'm gonna walk you through it as you annotate your Bibles. And you may think it's a sin to write in your Bible. I think it's a sin not to. I think your Bible, it would be a great legacy for you to pass on to your children one day, your Bible, and that they would find your notes in it. What we're gonna do is we're gonna go to the first verse, we're just gonna write a number one by it, and when we're done studying the first verse, we're gonna, at the bottom of that verse, write go to, and we're gonna put the next passage. Then we'll go to the next passage, we'll write a number two. We'll study that verse, and then when we're done, we'll say, go to, and we'll do the next passage. We're gonna do that for seven verses this morning, and look at seven ways that we deceive ourselves. And so, what I wanna do is ask you to get your Bibles out, your pen, your pencil, and let's walk through doing this, and if you don't ever do it again, at least you'll know how. But this is something that might be A value to you, some of you men might be studying one day, what does the Bible say about being a good father? And you find a verse about it, and you write that, and then maybe you look in your concordance, you find another verse, and you could chain those verses together, so every once in a while, you could go back and do your own study all over again on what does it mean to be a good father? And again, take notes in the bowl if you don't have yours. So, first verse we're gonna go to is 1 Corinthians 3.18. So go ahead and turn there in your Bible, 1 Corinthians 3.18, and right in number one at the top of this verse. And we're gonna be going kind of in order. Through the New Testament, I think when I spoke to the Indian church, I had this kind of going back and forth. I decided to put them in order to make it a little easier for you to navigate this morning. But 1 Corinthians 3.18, and let me read this verse to you. And by the way, there's a lot of verses with the word deceive in it, but a lot of those verses are about other people deceiving us. But there's several instances in the New Testament says that we can deceive ourselves. or we can easily be deceived because of our own sin nature. And so here's what he says in 1 Corinthians 3, 18. Let no one deceive himself. If anyone thinks himself to be wise among you in this age, let him become a fool in order that he may become wise. let him become a fool in order that he may become wise. And if you look in the context of 1 Corinthians 3, the Apostle Paul is somewhat sarcastically, or he's somewhat suggesting that he has become a fool for Christ because in the wisdom of the world, In the philosophy of the world, in the world of Socrates and Plato and Aristotle, with all their human reasoning and rationalizing and things of that nature, the gospel seems foolish. And to think about it, if you think about it, the gospel had to sound really strange to the world. Still does, by the way. But I mean, we tell people you gotta die before you can live. Isn't that interesting? You gotta lose before you have. You've got to be willing to lose your life to have a life. You know, these are weird concepts. So the gospel seems foolish to anyone from a worldly philosophy. So how do we deceive ourselves? Well, first of all, we deceive ourselves when we think we are wise apart from the word of God. If we think that we are wise, we are intelligent, we are smart apart from the word of God, then we're deceiving ourselves. We also deceive ourselves when we rely on our own human intellect, our own human reasoning, Our human philosophy or any other sources outside the Bible as our rule of faith and practice. Now let me comment on this a little bit further. Some of you have heard the term the early church fathers. I think that's a regrettable term in my opinion. They weren't, first of all, Jesus himself says call no man father, okay? So we shouldn't be calling a priest father, we shouldn't be calling someone the early church fathers. It's a bad term and it's certainly what Christ told us not to do. But they say, well, we need to follow the teachings of Augustine or Augustine, depending on how you say it, but Augustine and Origen and Clement of Alexandria and some of these other people. And they revere them because they say these were the early church fathers. The reality of this though, is that the early church fathers didn't agree on everything. So John Chrysostom, for example, told the other, quote, early church fathers, unquote, that they were interpreting the Bible incorrectly because they were allegorizing everything in the Old Testament. What happened is some people, some Jews, basically came to the Gentile Christians of that day and said, well, what do you do with the Old Testament? It doesn't talk about Christ. And so rather than really studying to answer the question, they started saying that the whole Old Testament was an allegory. You could take every single story in the Old Testament, make it an allegory, and it would point to Jesus Christ. Now let me be clear about something. The Old Testament is the shadow of which the New Testament is the substance. We do see pictures of Christ in the Old Testament. But you can't take the story of JL nailing Sisera's head to the floor with a peg, and make an analogy out of that about Jesus Christ. But this is the kind of thing the early church fathers did. They said, well, the whole Old Testament's really a Christian book because every story is an analogy about Jesus Christ or an allegory about Jesus Christ. And so what they did is they started the allegorical interpretation of scriptures. And John Chrysostom told them, you're doing that wrong. We need to get into the language. We need to study what those scriptures meant in the minds of the authors and extract that meaning and apply it to our day. In other words, he was arguing for a process that today we would call exegesis. That is studying a scripture, finding out what the author meant when he wrote those scriptures, and bringing that meaning out. And that's what we should be doing, but they weren't doing that. And so, these early church fathers didn't agree with each other. They didn't agree on where Christ was born. They didn't agree on a lot of things. So, if you're gonna have a religion that follows the teachings of the early church fathers, you have a problem. Your problem is, who do you believe? Who do you believe? So, what we need to do is learn how to draw out, that's called exegesis, rather than to read our own meanings into scripture, which is called eisegesis. And so we need to learn to study the Bible with the view of what did the authors mean? So we also deceive ourselves when we follow others who supposedly have a superior intellect or superior degrees or they have superior reasoning from human philosophy. In other words, they are people who are self-proclaimed to be wise people. They are people to try to impress you with their credentials or the academic nature of their talk, or by reasoning with the Socratic method. And by the way, because we're in mixed company and there are children present, I won't tell you the kinds of sins in which Aristotle and Plato and Socrates were involved. Let's just say it was a common thing for a student of one of these philosophers to have a physical relationship with the philosopher until they got to a certain age, and then they were supposed to leave and get married. And this was a common thing in society, but it's something that scripture condemns. But the reasoning of these people was not based on God's truth. And so we need to make sure that even though there's some sects of Christianity that follow the teachings of these philosophers or the early church fathers, et cetera, they embrace some doctrines that are contrary to the word of God. For example, the idea of sacraments of the church, meaning the church has certain ceremonies that they perform, and in those ceremonies, they convey the grace of God. For example, they say you can baptize an infant, and it doesn't matter if that child never grows up to profess Jesus Christ as their savior, because they were baptized, the baptism of the church conveys salvation on the child. And yet, my Bible tells me that I must call upon the name of the Lord and then I'll be saved. I have to make this personal decision. That's what the Bible says. It's not what some churches say. And we don't need sacraments. because Christ is our sacrament. He is the sacrifice. He is the method by which grace comes. One of the songs we sang today says, I need no other argument. I need no other plea. Why? I only need Christ who died for me. That was good theology in the song we sang this morning, and it's certainly the correct theology. The idea of baptizing infants when in reality it's supposed to be believer's baptism. So we have a problem there. We deceive ourselves when we do that. And I want to pass on a word to the intelligent among you, and I think most of you probably fall into that category. But, you know, we have different ways of measuring IQ, and so I remember when I was in junior high, I went to the principal because I knew the principal. He was in the Gideons, and my dad was in the Gideons, and so I attended some prayer breakfast with him, and I went to Mr.. Davis one morning, and I told Mr.. Davis that I was just bored in school I don't know what made me think I had the right to complain, but I was just bored out of my gourd and So he referred me to the counselor and so for the first period of school for the next two weeks I went to the counselor every single morning during my first class and somehow or other Mr.. Davis made that all right with my teacher and And they had me moving blocks around, and they asked me questions. And basically what they were doing was looking at my ability to perform at a higher level. They were giving me IQ tests, you know, your intelligence quotient test and whatnot. And finally, so at the last day of the seventh grade, I opened my final report card, and it says promoted to the ninth grade. So I managed to skip a grade for which I was grateful, and I did fine. I did fine. That helped me a lot. I was able to still perform fine, but I was much more engaged. I wasn't quite bored all the time, and that was fine. But over the years, my sister got her degree in psychology, so she used to give me IQ tests for fun. But it's amazing. I was going to the University of Oklahoma, And one day we walked into class and they gave us an IQ test. And basically when I got the results back, it said I was just maybe one point above an amoeba. I was thoroughly stupid. I think my score, normally 100 is kind of an average IQ, 120 is a little above average, 140 to 160 is kind of a genius IQ. I think I scored a 25. But the problem was is they gave me the IQ test written in the language of the ghetto. And their point was is that IQ tests are often skewed because of the language that's used in IQ tests. And if you give a kid in the ghetto an IQ test written for a normal college Caucasian person, they're probably not going to do well, just like I didn't do very well on an IQ test written with ghetto language in it. So that was an interesting insight, you know. Let me tell you something, if you think you're really smart, take an IQ test written for people in the ghetto, you'll find out how stupid you really are. But we have this idea sometimes that we have this natural intelligence and we should rely on it. I remember I used to warn one of my children who was exceptionally intelligent very often that the greatest problem that child would ever face would be listening to his own intelligence and relying upon it instead of relying upon the written word of God. And that's naturally intelligent people are easily drawn away. It's kind of like Jesus said, it was hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Well, I think sometimes it's hard for a person with a high IQ to enter the kingdom of heaven. Not because the gospel doesn't withstand intellectual scrutiny, but because they rely upon their own reasoning and their own intelligence And they think that their reasoning is superior and they can actually go into the Bible and pick the parts that they choose to believe and pick the other parts that they're not going to believe simply because they have the intelligence to decide which passages apply to them and which do not. So if you or your child is gifted with intellect, you need to learn that true reasoning, true logic begins with Jesus Christ. We know that because John says, in the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God. The same was in the beginning with God, and everything that was made was made by him, and not anything was made without him. The Logos, the word, is the Logos is the foundation of logic, okay? So we can't have true logic without Jesus Christ. And so we need to know that anything that contradicts the word of God as contained in the 66 books of the Bible is simply not true. So we need to learn how to truly become wise. Now how do we do that? How do we truly become wise? First of all, you need to admit to God that he alone is wise and that you have no wisdom of your own that you need him to fill you with his wisdom. And we know that he will because James 1 5 says, if any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God who gives to all men liberally and upbraideth not. He will give you wisdom and he won't reproach you for not using it the last time. You need to know that God doesn't want your, or need your intellect. He wants your heart and he wants you to submit to his will. And then he can use your intellect. But wisdom comes from God's word and understanding his principles. Now what I want you to do at the bottom of 1 Corinthians 3.18, as you see highlighted here in yellow, is write this. Write, go to 1 Corinthians 6.9. So go ahead and do that in your Bible right now, because that'll take you to the next verse. And I really hope you're taking the time to annotate this, because it could be a blessing to you later. I often look through my Bible and find one of these, and it gives me something to study that I need to be reminded of again. So go to 1 Corinthians 6.9. And then turn over to 1 Corinthians 6, 9, and when you get there, write a number two at the top so you know this is the second verse in this series. And let's read these verses together. Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God. Now, that's a harsh phrase, because let me tell you what that means. When it says shall not inherit the kingdom of God, it says these are people that are not going to heaven. That's pretty tough language, but it's very clear. There's no other possible meaning for it. Just means that they're not going to heaven. Sorry, my mouth's getting dry today. So what is it? Who are the people that will not inherit the kingdom of God? Well, here it comes. Be not deceived. And what he means is don't deceive yourself. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners shall inherit the kingdom of God. Let me read it to you from the Lexham English Bible because it's kind of an interesting, it brings out some meaning a little bit better. He says, do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither sexually immoral people, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor passive homosexual partners, nor dominant homosexual partners, nor thieves, nor greedy persons, nor drunkards, nor abusive persons, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. Now, that's a pretty big list, and basically Paul says, here's who's not going to heaven. People who commit sexual sin, people who put other things in front of God and commit idolatry, people who are not faithful to their marriage partner, people who are in a homosexual relationship, whether it's the passive person or the active person, thieves, if you've stolen, you're not going to heaven, covetous, when you want stuff that other people have, that you don't have drunkards, that you live being influenced by alcohol, revilers, extortioners, and extortion means a robber or a plunder, someone who carries off others. Now, I gotta be honest with you, there's a few of those I've had problems with. And your initial reaction reading this verse is to be just a little bit freaked out because it might be that at some point in time, you've committed adultery. You don't have to physically be with someone else to commit adultery, because what did Jesus say? If you look after a woman to lust after in your heart, you've already committed adultery. So under that standard, a lot of us have already failed, okay? Thieves, probably at some time, everyone of you has taken something, I know I have, that didn't belong to you. My mother saw me do that, and she managed to correct me in a way I'll never forget. I've been drunk before, I'm not proud of that. I wish I had the brain cells that I destroyed those several occasions back now. I could really use them more. So, you know, when you look at it, who among us can actually go to heaven with that list? That list seems like it's pretty well at some point gonna target all of us for some mistakes that we've made in the past. If we've ever committed a sexual sin, if we ever put something else ahead of God, we've all done that one. If we've ever lusted after a person who wasn't our marriage partner, if we ever took something that didn't belong to you, if we'd ever been drunk, if we ever coveted, I'm sorry, but that list right there probably means that most of us by that standard are going to hell. So what did Paul mean when he says these people would not inherit the kingdom of God? Well, we need to know something a little bit about Greek tenses, and I don't expect any of you to take a Greek course, but I want to fill you in on a couple of things. In Greek, the tense of a verb tells you more about the kind of action than it does about the time of action. So, for example, a present tense verb means that there is continuing action. It means the action is going on continuously. It doesn't mean it's happening now, it just means it's happening continuously. And then we have what's called the aorist tense, and aorist tense means that the verb happens at one point in time, and that there's one, and by the way, the New Testament often refers to, with an aorist tense, to the moment at which you receive Christ, because it's not something you do every single day, but it's something that you must do to receive Christ. It's a point in time that you make a decision. Then there's the perfect tense, This means you did something at one point in time, but it has a continuing result. In other words, it started at a very definite point, but the result is continuing. And then, of course, there's a future tense, which means it's gonna happen at a point in the future. Now, what does all this have to do with anything? Well, what is Paul saying, and I'm gonna, these are all present tense verbs. So if we insert the word continually, the meaning becomes more apparent. So it would sound something like this, and if you were translating from the Greek, do not deceive yourselves, those who continually live in sexual immorality, those who continually put idols before God, those who continually live in adultery, those who continually live the homosexual lifestyle, those who continually steal, those who continually live to satisfy their greed, those who continue to live in slavery to alcohol, those who continue to abuse others, and those who continue to swindle and cheat others give evidence of the fact They're not going to inherit the kingdom of God because they're not genuinely born again. That's Paul's argument. So here it is. Before I was saved, I lived at a constantly low level where I was a slave to sin. Now every now and then, if you were graphing this, you might see the graph jump up because even a lost person can do a few good things, okay? But after I was saved, My life is on a higher plane because now I'm living for Jesus Christ. I still, however, mess up. And when I mess up, my graph would drop down because I sinned, but then I go back up, and I'm living on a higher plane. In other words, used to, I was in slavery to sin, and once in a while I did a good thing. After Jesus saved me, I live a life for Jesus, and I try to be holy and righteous because God put his Holy Spirit within me, and the Holy Spirit tells me when I'm doing something wrong. It corrects me and it puts me back on a straight path. And so I yield to the spirit. And so I may occasionally sin, but I go back up. So instead of a sinner who sins all the time and occasionally does something good, I become a saint who sometimes sins. I live on a different plane. And that's the whole point. In other words, I may get dirty, but I don't live in the mud any longer. I may get dirty, but I no longer live in the mud. So now, by the way, Paul gives us some good news. And the reason you know that if you've ever been drunk, you can still receive Jesus Christ and you can still go to heaven is because Paul went on in the next verse to say this, 1 Corinthians 6, 11. And some of you were these things, but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified. By the way, these are all aorist verbs. in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God. So at the moment I received Jesus Christ, I was washed, I was sanctified, I was justified, meaning I'm going to heaven, and now I live a different life. I am not the same person. That's why 2 Corinthians 5, 17 says, if any man be in Christ, he's a new creature. Old things are passed away, behold, all things become new. Your nature changes when you receive Christ, and that is good news. All right, so what I want you to do under this verse, and as you see there in yellow, write the words, go to 1 Corinthians 15, 33. Just jot this down in your Bible. Go to 1 Corinthians 15, 33. I'll give you just a second to do that. So moving on to 1 Corinthians 15, 33, and this is the chapter where Paul talks about the resurrection, but before he gets to that section of 1 Corinthians 15, he says this to the Corinthians, be not deceived, evil communications corrupt good manners. Or as the Lexham English Bible says, bad company corrupts good morals. Either one is a very fine translation of that verse. We deceive ourselves when we think that we can keep company with ungodly people and it not drag us down a little bit. That doesn't mean we should quarantine ourselves from the ungodly because we need to share the gospel with them, but it means that we need to be very careful who our friends are, the people we spend the majority of our time with, because bad company corrupts good morals. When we keep company with ungodly convenience, it's going to drag us down. We're going to find words entering our vocabulary that shouldn't be there. We're gonna find this engaging in habits that shouldn't be there. When we subject ourselves to literature that is not God honoring or it contradicts scripture, that's going to, we're gonna be deceiving ourselves. When we listen to music that doesn't honor God, that he wouldn't be pleased with, and it doesn't mean that all music has to be overtly religious, but it needs to be things that's not leading to sensuality. We need to, if we subject ourselves to media that's not God honoring, it drags us down. Because what's it do? It helps us tolerate wicked words. And it helps us to tolerate wicked ideas. They dull our senses. And in computer world, you know, the first thing they ever teach you in computer programming is GIGO. It means garbage in, garbage out. You put garbage in a program, that's what you're going to get out of the program. That works for life too. If you have bad input, you're going to get bad output. Now I want you to go to the bottom of this verse in 1 Corinthians 15, 33, and as you see in yellow here, write, go to Galatians 6, 3. So this was verse number three. If you didn't write the number three in here, go ahead and do it. And then write, go to Galatians 6, 3. Galatians 6, 3. Now when you get to Galatians 6, 3, here's what it says. This is number four, by the way, so you can go ahead and write the number four in there. For if a man think himself to be something when he's nothing, He deceives himself. For if anyone thinks he's something, although he's nothing, he is deceiving himself. Now, what does this mean? How are we deceiving ourselves here? Well, first of all, we deceive ourselves if we ever think that we're good enough to get into heaven. It's kind of like, oh, I'm really special. I'm a good guy. I do a whole lot more good than bad. Therefore, I know I'm getting into heaven. By the way, this is the fundamental principle behind Islam. Islam basically says, if I do more good works than bad works, eventually I'll get into wherever Allah is. And when I get there, I'll have 72 virgins who are perpetual virgins for all of eternity to reward me for the fact that I was more good than bad. And that's what Muslim men believe. And here's my question for Muslims. How do you know which way the scale is tipping? Do you really know in God's eyes that you do more good than bad? Now think about this for a minute. Why would I even ask that? Most of you say, well, yeah, I'm worth good and bad. It's why I'm here in church. And I do commend you for being here, thank you. But the reality is that God says that all our righteousness is like filthy rags to him. So even the good stuff we do, looks like filthy rags to him. And he was referring in the Hebrew word to a woman's menstrual rags. And he says, that's what our good stuff looks like. It's not something you'd want to brag about. And so if we think we're good enough to get in heaven, if we think that somehow we're more precious to God than others are, it's kind of like, well, God saved me because I grew up on the right side of the tracks. Or God saved me because I have white skin instead of black skin. That's wrong. God is colorblind when it comes to people. When we believe our own intelligence is sufficient that makes us a critic or a judge of God's word so that we can embrace things in our religious practice that are contrary to God's word, we're deceiving ourselves. If we believe that man's reasoning or religious tradition should shape our faith and practice instead of the word God, you are deceiving yourself. Or by thinking others ought to be impressed by our academic achievements, our wealth, or something else that makes us special, we're deceiving ourselves. I've got Hope and her mother gave me a Christmas present this year that I'd wanted for many years. And I have an autographed picture by Clayton Moore. Who knows who Clayton Moore is? He signed it in 1979. Okay, few people know who Clayton Moore is. You probably know him better as the guy with the silver bullets who rode a white horse and they called him the Lone Ranger. And so I have an autographed picture signed by the guy that played the Lone Ranger, signed in 1979. And the thing is, he actually was one of those Hollywood heroes that kind of lived up to the persona that he played on TV. He was a genuinely good guy. And he actually later penned what he calls the Lone Ranger's Creed, the creed he lived by. And that's what I wanted. I wanted his autographed picture of the Lone Ranger's Creed underneath in a frame. So I got that for Christmas. It's something I've wanted for a long time. And so I can go in there every morning and kind of look at the Lone Ranger's Creed and hope that I'm a little bit like that guy and somebody someday will say as I'm riding out into the sunset, who was that masked man? That would be really cool. In order, we have a problem in our house. I don't know if you have it at your house. We have run out of wall space. I have daughters who are artists. I have a mother who was an artist. We've got pictures everywhere. It's hard to find a piece of sheet rock left in our house that doesn't have something on it. So I wanted this in my office and the only way I could put it up in my office was to take down my two seminary degrees. And I worked hard for those degrees. I spent, you know, I crammed four years of bachelor's education into eight. And then I have a three-year graduate degree, which is about the equivalent of a PhD in most worlds, 90 graduate hours I got for my master's. And I managed to get good grades, and I graded with a good GPA on both of them. But you know, in all the years I've had those things hanging on my wall, Nobody's ever come in and acted impressed. I've never had an employer ask me what my grade point average was in school. They've just gone, oh, you got a degree, cool. And then they move on from there. What do you really know that can help me? But a lot of times we work for these things and then we expect other people to be impressed by them. And the reality is nobody really is. It's not that impressive. God is certainly not impressed by our credentials, and there are a lot of people who go around, though, touting the fact that you should listen to them by virtue of their academic degrees. No, you should listen to people who have God's truth. That's what you should listen to. So what is the reality? The reality is there's not a single one of us here that's special enough to merit the favor of God. is God's riches at Christ's expense. It is God's unmerited favor toward us. If you are here today and you've received Jesus your Savior, and let me ask this question right now. There's some folks here that haven't done this yet. They're seeking, maybe there's some children that they've thought about it and mama's told them that they need to ask Jesus into their heart, and yet they haven't done that. And this is not, you can't just go to heaven because you grew up in a Christian home. You can't just go to heaven because you come and sit in church. You have to have, at some point in your life, you have to ask Jesus in your heart. I grew up believing in Jesus because my mother was my Sunday school teacher and she did a good job. I remember I had this three ring binder that every week she'd give me a new Bible story to put in that three ring binder and she'd teach me that Bible story and then I had it from then on out. But when I was about nine years old, I was sitting in the amphitheater of Palo Duro Canyon in Canyon, Texas. And there was a preacher by the name of Brother Bobby Myers that was preaching a revival message to an outdoor crowd in Palo Duro Canyon. I've been back there since then and taken pictures of where I was in the seating that was there because I still remember. And what I remember is that I realized that I had never, he was telling me I needed to have asked Jesus to be my savior, and I couldn't remember I'd ever done that. I always believed Jesus, I believe he died for my sins, I believe he rose again from the dead, and why shouldn't I believe him? I heard about him every Sunday. But I thought, I don't think I've done that. And so that day, July 9th, 1969, I went forward at the end of the service, And I said, Jesus, I don't know if I've ever done this. I'm not sure. So right now, today, if I haven't already done it before, I want you to come into my heart and be my Savior and my Lord, and I want you to save me, and I want you to forgive me of my sins. So that's the day I look back to, by the way, as the day that I feel, excuse me, I said 69, it was 71. That's the day I look back to as the day that I was saved. because that's the day I nailed it in the ground and put up the signpost that I had, in fact, asked Jesus in my heart. The reality is, without Jesus in our heart, our bodies are really just bags of dust. You know what happens to a body when it decays in the ground. There's a reason that they used to say ashes to ashes, dust to dust. That's what we go back to. We're just bags of dust waiting to decay unless Jesus is in our heart, because without Christ, your life is wasted. But if your life really wants to count for something now, count for eternity, and really make a difference in the world, you need Jesus Christ in your heart. Paul gives very good evidence of this. Paul talks about that everything without Christ is really nothing. For example, 2 Corinthians 6.10. Paul said he believed his earthly possessions to amount to nothing. He says, as sorrowful yet always rejoicing, as poor yet making many rich, as having nothing, and yet possessing all things. Paul believed that if you live to gather wealth and acclaim, your life is nothing, 2 Corinthians 8, 15. As it is written, he that gathered much had nothing over, and he gathered little, had no lack. Paul believed himself to be nothing without Christ, 2 Corinthians 12, 11. I am become full and glorying, you have compelled me, for I ought to have been commended of you, for in nothing am I behind the very chiefest apostles, though I be nothing. Paul says, I'm nothing. and I may have an important role in the gospel right now, but I'm nothing without Christ. Paul believed that the religious leaders and the oral traditions of his day added nothing to God's truth. He said in Galatians 2.6, but of these who seem to be somewhat, these scholarly religious types, whatsoever they were, it maketh no matter to me, God accepteth no man's person. He says, for they who seem to be somewhat in conference added nothing to me. the early church fathers would not have impressed Paul. Why? Because nothing impressed him besides Jesus Christ. So let's move on. So under number four here, go to Galatians 6, 7. That's just four verses down, so if you want to. You can just draw an arrow down there to the next verse. But Galatians 6, verses seven and eight. Listen to what it says. This is number five. So right here next to verse seven, you can write number five. Do not be deceived. God is not to be mocked. For whatever a person sows, this he will also reap, because the one who sows to his own flesh will reap corruption from the flesh, but the one who sows to the Spirit will reap eternal life from the Spirit. He says, don't be deceived. God's not mocked. For whatever you sow, that you shall also reap. What would this mean? How do we deceive ourselves here? Well, we deceive ourselves when we think we can get away with sin and there'll be no consequences. Anytime you think, hey, well, nobody'll know I'm doing this, or nobody's gonna know I've looked at this website, or nobody's gonna know that I took this thing that belonged to somebody else, nobody'll know. But God knows. Fact is, he says that the day and the night are alike to him. He sees the same whether it's light outside or dark outside. He's not the least bit worried that he's gonna miss anything. God's not surprised by anything. Now there are some laws about reaping. Now those of you who grew up around a farmer, had farmers in your family, you should know these laws. But first of all, you always reap more than you sow. So in other words, you plant one kernel of corn, you're going to get a bunch of kernels back when that stalk grows up. You reap more than you sow. So whatever you're sowing now, it better be something good because you're going to have more of it later. And then you always reap the same kind that you sow. So if you sow kindness and love and giving into the lives of others, guess what's going to come back to you later? That same thing. But if you're always talking down and being critical toward others, guess what's coming back to you later? You get the same kind of thing back. This is why we have to be very careful that we try to keep the hearts of our children rather than to irritate them. And then we always reap at a later time than we sow. See, sometimes we do stuff and we think we got away with it because there's no immediate consequences. But when you put corn into the ground, it doesn't immediately shoot up. The only time that ever happened, by the way, was in jacking the beanstalk. Okay, and even that took overnight. Okay, the point is, is that stuff that we do, there's often not an immediate consequence, but that does not mean that there's no consequence. We will always reap at a later time than we sow. So what are you sowing? I think we can sow it in different ways, by the way. I think we sow with our words. You know, that old thing about sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me, that's the biggest lie ever hatched in the halls of hell. Words do hurt. And you remember them sometime for years and decades after they were said. Your deeds. they're gonna come back on you as well. What we need to be doing is asking ourselves, are we gonna be happy with the harvest? So we deceive ourselves if we think that our sin has no consequence. And when we think that we can get away with it. All right, so moving on. So right here at the bottom of this verse, right, go to James 1, 22. James 1, 22. So this is verse number five. We're about to move to verse six. James 1, 22, and here it is. So when you get to James 1, 22 through 24, just write number six up here. Remember, we're only doing seven, so you're in the home stretch now. But listen to this, and of course, I normally do King James here, but this is the Lexham English Bible. It says, but be doers of the message, King James says, but be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. because if anyone's a hearer of the message and not a doer, this is like someone staring at his own face in a mirror for he looks at himself and goes away and immediately forgets what sort of person he was. Now, obviously, if you look at the picture on the front of the bulletin, you'll see someone who is deceived by what he sees in the mirror because he chooses not to pay attention to it and he chooses to believe what he wants to believe. And I may be that guy standing in front of the mirror. If I was yellow and had a pointy looking head, maybe that's what I would look like. But he says, we're like a person who looks in a mirror and then goes away and doesn't remember what he just saw or doesn't realize he needed to fix anything based on what he saw. and we need to figure out how to fix that. So how do we deceive ourselves? Well, we deceive ourselves anytime we hear the word of God or read the word of God and we don't do anything with the word of God. If you hear it or you read it and you don't do anything with it, you're deceiving ourselves. And by the way, there are three times in scripture that you find the word mirror, okay? And this is one of the first times. I call this the mirror of examination because James is saying, If you don't do the word of God, you're like a person who looks in the mirror, sees everything wrong with himself, walks away and doesn't know anything about it. Now, when I went to the mirror this morning, I noticed that my beard had grown quite a bit overnight, and I could see that rough stuff there. I also noticed that what little bit of hair I had had become wavy. They were all waving at each other, and I needed to kind of glue it down a little bit so you wouldn't think that they were waving at you. I noticed that my tongue had turned a different color overnight. It was time to brush your teeth and scrape your tongue and all that. I just noticed that there were some things that were wrong. Now, if I had looked at that mirror, saw the mess that I was and came to church like that, probably wouldn't have been very God honoring. And you might've wondered what was wrong with me. So this is the mirror of examination. When we look into the word of God, it ought to show us what's wrong. And then the second mirror is back in the book of Exodus. I call this the mirror of restoration. In Exodus 30 and verse 18, God tells Moses, and you'll make a laver or a basin of bronze and a bronze stand for washing, and you'll put it between the tent of assembly and the altar, and you'll put water there. So when you came into the tabernacle, you came, first of all, to the brazen altar where sacrifice was made. Before you could go into the tent, the tent was called the tabernacle proper. And that's where there was a table of showbread, there was a golden candlestick, and there was an altar of incense. Then there was a big curtain, and behind that was the Ark of the Covenant. Before you could go into the tent, there was this giant bowl outside that had a giant saucer underneath it. You had to wash your hands in the bowl, you had to wash your feet in the saucer before you went in the tent, or God says, if you don't do this, you're gonna die. In other words, it's a big deal before you go worship God that you clean your heart. You clean your hands, you clean your feet. So, now what does that have to do with mirrors? Well, if you look eight chapters later in Exodus 38 is where the labor's actually made. Listen to what it says. He made the basin of bronze and a stand of bronze from the mirrors of the serving women who served at the entrance to the tent of assembly. See, back then they didn't have glass. That didn't come along until the Phoenicians invented it in the 14th century B.C. they made mirrors of brass. They'd get their brass, and they would polish it up real good, and when brass is polished enough, you can actually see your face in it. And so women would have a polished piece of brass, and they would look in there, and of course you know their husbands would probably play tricks on them sometime, come warp the brass a little bit so it looked like they put on 40 pounds the next day. And you know, I can see where brass has some problems that maybe glass didn't. But the point is, this was the mirror of restoration Once you know what's wrong in reading God's word, you need to make it right with God. In other words, when I see my sins in scripture, I'm supposed to confess those and forsake them, and then God will grant me mercy. Then there's a third mirror, 2 Corinthians 3, 18, says, and we all with unfilled face reflecting the glory of the Lord are being transformed in the same image from glory into glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit. Basically, what he's saying here is that when we spend time in God's Word and we don't just read it, but we actually do what God's Word tells us to do. We meditate on it. We allow it to change us. We allow it to transform us. When we do that, we should be becoming more like Christ. And every year, our goal should be more like Christ than we were the last year. So if you haven't made your New Year's resolutions yet, here's a late one for you. Be more like Jesus. That would be a good goal, wouldn't it? Wouldn't it be wonderful at the end of this year if people said, you're more like Jesus than you used to be? What an amazing thing. I call this the mirror of transformation. Warren Wiersbe, who's a Bible commentator and a professor at Dallas Theological Seminary, He translated this verse a different way. He said, the children of God looking into the word of God are changed by the spirit of God to be like the son of God. So one day they'd share in the glory of God. I like that. So the thing is we deceive ourselves when what? When we only hear or read the word, but don't do it. So what must we remember? We need to remember As Baptists, we're taught, and hopefully you were taught, Brother Steve mentioned the Christian Missionary Alliance this morning. I have a lot of respect for that denomination. And down here in the South, they're pretty liberal, but in the North, they're very conservative. And in the North, typically, the CMA churches give 70% of their income to missions. That's very commendable. So I find that kind of thing very commendable, but if you were in a church like that, or a good Bible church, or a Baptist church, you should have heard that the word of God is inerrant. There's no errors in God's word. Now that, back when I was working, started my doctoral studies at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary years ago, there was actually conflict at the time. leader of the seminary, Dr. Russell Dilday, kind of had a bunch of people that had a more liberal bent to them. And so I went to a class on hermeneutics. Hermeneutics is how do you study the Bible. It's the science of Bible interpretation. And one of the first things I heard in that class was, oh, inerrancy isn't a good term. You know, because obviously the dimensions given for the circumference of the laver don't match up to the diameter of the laver. Well, yes, they do in round numbers, but they just didn't say, in other words, they didn't plot out pi, 3.414 blah, blah, blah, to the ultimate decimal point. In rounded numbers, the numbers are perfectly fine. There's nothing wrong with them. So yes, sometimes we don't have scientific precision to five or six or ten decimal places when it's giving measurements, but the Bible's inerrant. There's no error in the Bible. It's also infallible, meaning that if you follow its truth, it'll never let you down. Its truths are always true. It never fails that its truths are true. And we should know that, and above all, we should agree that the Bible is inspired. It says, but basically Paul said in 2 Timothy 3, 16 and 17, that every word of God was inspired. It was God-breathed. He breathed into it. And so it's different. You can have all the writings of the church fathers and all the oral traditions and all the scholars written all the books, and I've written a few books myself, but I wanna tell you there's a difference between all the other books that have ever been written in the Bible because the Bible is God-breathed. It's inspired. But a lot of Baptists are okay with saying the Bible's inerrant, infallible, It's inspired, but we forget that it's also imperative. In other words, it's not just a list of suggestions. It's a list of commandments. It's principles to live by. It isn't just something that we can kind of pick and choose like we do at a cafeteria what we want. We need to understand the whole counsel of the word of God. We need to shape our lives by it. And we deceive ourselves when we forget that the word of God is to be imperative and we just read it and we go away like the guy who looks in a mirror, sees what's wrong and he never does anything about it. The Bible's meant to be studied diligently. It's meant to be meditated on and absorbed into our lives. It's meant to transform us in the image of Christ. It's meant to be active and alive and it discerns between joints and marrow, between the thoughts and the intents of the heart and the mind. So down at the bottom of this sixth verse, let's write our last reference for this morning, and it's 1 John 1.8. And by the way, I'm not suggesting that these seven are the only seven. You can probably add your others too, but a lot of those other verses are ways others deceive us. That would be another good chain reference story. But just down here at the bottom right, go to 1 John 1.8, and we'll go to our last verse. This verse says, if we say that we have no sin, We deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. I've had a lot of interesting titles that people have called me. For years, I'd go places and they'd say, oh, you're the computer guy. Couldn't remember my name, I'm the computer guy, because I'm the guy that showed up to fix the computer. I've been called dad, which is my favorite title, just about. I've been called pastor. I've been called brother. In Baptist churches, we tend to call each other brother, so and so. But I'm fine with pastor. That's a great title. Actually, this last year, one of my coworkers in India, a really nice guy that he and I, we had a daily conference call every single day when we worked on a project together for about 15 months. And no one else has ever called me this, but he called me Tom Cruise. I guess it's the startling resemblance. Although, I need to go get a wig made like his. But no, he said that when we were having stressful meetings, I was the person who got everybody to calm down and work together again. And I was leaving the project before him. He says, what are we going to do without our Tom Cruise? Well, I gotta admit, that was a real stretch for me, like obviously it was a stretch for you just now. But one of the most interesting titles anyone has ever given me was a lady when I was pastoring Walston Springs Baptist Church in Palestine, Texas, and this lady called me a milk sop of a preacher. You know, what a milk sop is, you know, if you used to dip your cornbread in milk to eat it, and the cornbread just kinda gets soggy and falls apart, you know, or something you sop milk up with, you know, imagine white bread absorbing milk, and then it's, not only does, that really makes it stick to the roof of your mouth, you know. If you call me a milk sop of a preacher, she called me one day in the Parsonage, and she told me she wanted to come to church, and of course, that always excites me when I hear somebody wants to come to church. And then as I talked to her, I started hearing some things that were setting off little alarm bells in my head theologically. So I asked her about her background, and she had been attending the Church of Christ Scientist. First of all, there is nothing scientific about the Church of Christ Scientist, so let's just dispel that notion. Basically, they believe that this isn't a real church, and you and I are not real people. We're all just notions in the mind of God. And if so, then God's having a nightmare, I'm telling you. Okay, but it's just, we don't really exist. And she not only wanted to come to my church, she was saying that she'd like to teach a lady's class in my church. Well, on the wall of the pastor's office and on the wall of my office, there are three pictures of a shepherd. And one of the pictures is of a shepherd beating off the wolves from the sheep. And that part of me came out and I thought, no, you're not coming here. And so I said, you know, I think you need to rethink your theology a little bit first before you come and join our church. I said, I'd be happy to talk to you. And at this point, she let me know something that I've only heard two or three people say in the last 40 years of ministry, but there are people who actually believe this. She said, she told me that she had never sinned. She'd never sinned. If I ever met a person like that, I gotta tell you, I'd be really impressed. And I will tell you that the most perfect person I have ever met in my life, I married. And I don't say that just because I need some brownie points, although I do. But I wish I had her character. And her patience and her kindness and her mercy. But she still sins. And this lady said she'd never sinned. So I quoted 1 John 1, 8 to her. Let me read that verse to you again, just in case you didn't catch it the first time. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves in the truth that's not in us. I quoted that verse to her. I said, right there, according to the scripture, tells me that you're living a lie, that the truth is not in you. Oh, she got mad. She said a few choice words and then she hung up. A few days later, I got a letter in the mail. I kept that letter. It's in my blue filing cabinet upstairs. I should bring it out and read it sometime too. It's pretty interesting. But that was the one where she called me a milk sop of a preacher because I had dared to suggest that she had sinned when obviously she had not. Well, most of us would say Well, I would never say that. I'd never say that I'd never sinned. We'd never do that, would we? Most of us would admit that we're sinners, so it might seem that this verse doesn't apply to us, but I think it kinda does in a way, because some of us have sins that we hold onto, and rather than admitting their sins and confessing them and forsaking them, because the Bible says, whoso confesseth his sin and forsakes it, that means you take it out from hiding, You expose it to the light, and then you let go, and you drop it, and you don't do it anymore. It says, whoso confesseth and forsaketh the sin shall have mercy. But the rest of the verse says, if you don't do that, you're gonna have judgment. But the thing is, a lot of us have a sin that rather than confessing and forsaking, we wanna hold onto, so we do this mental gymnastics to justify our sin and say, well, in my particular situation, this isn't really a sin. In my particular situation, I'm entitled to this. Or in my particular situation, God will be okay with this. He understands my weakness. This isn't something I have to confess. I went to a doctor one time for a condition and the doctor told me to engage in a practice that basically the Bible condemns the sinful. And he says, now, he says, this isn't a sin. It's just something you need to do for your health. And I'm like, no. because God would still consider it a sin. So we justify things, we condone things, we look at things, but we need to examine God's word and sees what God says about it. See, the problem is our morality often dictates our theology. We wanna live a certain way, so we find a theology that lets us live that way rather than letting our theology shape our morality. That's the way it should be. We should look into God's word and allow God's truth to shape the way we live and not the opposite. So the great deceiver, that is being Satan, obviously, his greatest weapon, I think, is the human heart. Why do I think that? Jeremiah 17, nine says, the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Who can know it? See, we're drawn away by our own heart. Our hearts are easily led astray. By the way, our hearts are the source of feeling. In the last 40 years, which it'll be 40 years here in just about three weeks from now, in the last 40 years of ministry, I have noticed something, that people who go off into theological error, they leave a biblical faith and maybe they go off into some extreme of one kind or another, extreme liberalism, extreme legalism, extreme fanaticism, And when they go off into one of these directions, almost every time someone will say, well, I can't get away from the feeling that, and they put an ellipsis. Someone told me that one time about that they didn't care what God's word said, they knew that they had to speak in tongues. I had someone tell me one time they couldn't get away from the feeling that the Lord's Supper was something more than a memorial, even though scripture very plainly says it is. And Jesus himself said, this do in memorial or in remembrance of me. Yes, it's a sacred, it's a solemn ceremony, but it's not a sacrament. Jesus is the sacrament. He's the one that died. It is his death that saves us, not the keeping of a ritual. When you say, I can't get away from the feeling, you're being deceived by your heart. and the heart is desperately wicked and deceitful above all things. That's why Satan has such an easy time working with it. God doesn't want us to base our lives on feelings simply because they do so easily lead us astray. He wants us to base our life on the 66 books in here. And you know what, if you look at this as a chore, you look at this as rules and regulations, and you look at this book as an impediment to your happiness, then you are not understanding the Bible. The greatest joy comes from applying these words to your life, of raising your family by its principles, of running your marriage by its principles, of running your finances by its principles, of treating other people according to its principles. It's a book that teaches you how to have an abundant life. Jesus didn't say, I come that you might be miserable. He says, I come that you might have life and that you might have it abundantly. I come that your joy may be full. So as we close and Brother Steve prepares the music, I wanna ask you the question, are you deceiving yourself? Do you think that just being a good person is gonna be enough to get you to heaven? That's a pretty important question. Do you think you're going to heaven if you die tonight? Is that enough just to be growing up in a Christian home No, it's not. You need to actually ask Jesus in your heart. And if you don't know how to do that, come talk to me. I'll help you. Do you think you have no sin of which you need to repent? You think that there's nothing between you and the Lord right now? Do you hear or read the word of God? Then don't do anything with it. So if you just heard the sermon, you can go home and your mind shifts to the Superbowl a little bit later today, but during the week, you don't think about what God has to say to you in his word. You're deceiving yourselves. Are you living in a life that is characterized by sin where you try to do good, but keep failing instead of a life where God keeps you doing righteous things and sometimes you mess up? Do you believe you can sin and there not be any consequences that you can get away with it? I have to tell something to my oldest daughter since she's here. I walked in one day to her bedroom and there was new artwork on the wall by the head of her bed and I pointed it out and took corrective measures and she wanted to know later, how did you know that was mine? Well, it's kinda right there by your bed, at the head of your bed, and it's a great place for artwork. Some things are obvious, but they're always even more obvious to God. Do you believe yourself to be so smart you can pick and choose what you wanna believe from God's word and you can ignore the plain teachings of God's word? Then you're deceiving yourself. And are you choosing human reasoning over the word of God? Are you choosing traditions instead of what God's word teaches? and you're deceiving yourself. Brother Steve comes and leads us in imitation. I'm going to ask you to stand.