Watch Out!

1:05Now, at the end of the day, I couldn't bring myself to affirm Catholic doctrine, and after more time and prayer, I decided to get a PhD in computer science so I could be involved in campus ministry as a professor. But to the extent that the questions of predestination and spiritual gifts and the priesthood and etc. caused me to search the Bible to learn more about God, those things were good. But as a young and immature Believer, I think they led me to a point of arrogance.

1:33As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 8, knowledge puffs up while love builds up. So I have a picture from my time as an undergraduate, and I think you'll understand what I'm talking about. So, Eugene Peterson's paraphrase of the beginning of 1 Corinthians 8 reads like this: The question keeps coming up regarding meat that's been offered up to an idol. Should you attend meals where such meat is served or not? We sometimes tend to think that we all need to know the answers to these kinds of questions, but sometimes our humble hearts can help us more than our proud minds. We never really know enough until we recognize that God alone knows it all.

2:22I'll just read that last line again. We never really know enough until we recognize that God alone knows it all. And you know, I had a real desire to know it all, and I don't think that was really good for me or the people around me. In Romans 14 and 15, Paul has been calling for unity among Christians who have different preferences or scruples, and Pastor Allen brought us through those passages. And we are encouraged to please our neighbor and not ourselves.

2:52But now, you know, it seemed like actually you would not be mistaken if you sort of felt like at the end of the day. End of last week's sermon that the book of Romans was over. But it's like, you know, Paul has another idea and he slaps a PS at the end of the letter. And he realizes that he needs to warn these Roman Christians about people who would rise up in the church that they need to avoid.

3:20And so in verse 17, he says, I appeal to you, brothers, watch out for those who cause divisions and create obstacles contrary to the doctrine that you've been taught. Avoid them. So our key point that we're going to talk about today is to watch out for those who cause divisions and create obstacles to the gospel. Watch out for those who cause divisions and create obstacles to the gospel. So to talk about that, I think it's good to start with a sort of a review of the doctrine that you've been taught.

3:52What is Paul talking about when he says this? And to do this, I'm going to give you a quick summary of the first few chapters of the book of Romans. Now, Genesis began by telling us that God created the world and everything in it, and that it was very good. We lived in perfect harmony with our Creator and in His creation. But what happens? The serpent comes, and the serpent tells Adam and Eve, God's holding out on you.

4:22He doesn't have your best interest in heart. You can eat from the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil that God forbade. And you'll be like God. You'll be like God. And that whole dying thing, that ain't going to happen. And so Adam and Eve chose to follow that rather than keeping their faith in God. They disobeyed God. And as Paul tells us in Romans 5, we all inherit that. We all inherit that. And we do it ourselves. We choose to believe that our way, the world's way, is better than God's way.

5:07And we do not live the perfect lives that we would need to to maintain fellowship with God. So now we'll roll back to chapter 1. So in chapter 1, Paul talks about the Gentiles. So we know God created the heavens and the earth. And what Paul says is: look out the tiny windows that we have, right? Look out the tiny windows. And if you look out the tiny windows, you can see attributes of God. It is evident to you just by looking out the window. God's eternal power, his divine nature are evident to everybody.

5:46But what do the Gentiles do? They reject that. They reject that, and they choose to worship the created thing rather than the creator. And so the Gentiles. Deserve the wrath of God. Now, there are a bunch of Jews who are undoubtedly snickering during chapter one. Yeah, you tell them, Paul, get those Gentiles. They're scum, we know. And so, in chapter two, Paul turns his attention to the Jews. And he says, You Jews, you have the law of God. You have the Word of God, and you do not follow it. You break the law, and as such, you deserve God's wrath.

6:32Now, I'm a computer science professor. I teach discreet math. Chapter three is for people who are bad at set theory. Right, so if you haven't figured out that you're covered in chapter one or chapter two, because we have Jews and Gentiles, in chapter three, what we see is that everyone, everyone does what is wrong. No one seeks God. They all deserve God's wrath. Now, thankfully, that is not the end of the book of Romans because that would be super-duper bad news. Right?

7:05So, Paul tells us at the end of chapter 3 that the righteousness of God, the righteousness of God, is given through faith in Jesus Christ to everyone who believes. Now, I usually tell people: if you hear something from me, whether it's here or in some other context where I'm teaching the Bible and you've never heard it before, that's probably heresy and you should throw that away. But if you hear Me say something that seems like a convenient repackaging of biblical truth that makes it easy for you to remember. Hold on to that.

7:39Now, Paul is going to similarly anticipate an objection from his readers, right? Like, wait, this whole you can be right with God by faith that doesn't sound like the way it is. This is new stuff you're talking about. And Paul says, no, it's not. This is the way it has always been. And he refers them back to the example of Abraham. Right? Abraham, what does it say about Abraham? Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness. Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness.

8:18This good news of justification by faith is not an invention of Paul. It's not that God had, you know, took some Prozac around 30 BC and had a sudden personality change and switched. No, this is God's plan from the beginning. This is who God always was and what God always wanted from us was to put our faith and trust in him from the beginning. So, what do we have in summary? So, in summary, we see that God created everything, and attributes of God are evident by looking at creation. Everyone, both Jews and Gentiles, have turned away from. From God and done what's wrong. We rightfully deserve God's wrath and judgment.

9:06But good news, God has provided his only begotten Son, Jesus, who took the punishment for sin that we deserve. He died on the cross in our place, and we see that God accepted this sacrifice because he raises Jesus from the dead. We just celebrated Easter. Jesus is not still somewhere buried in the ground in Israel. Jesus is not still buried in the ground somewhere in Israel. The fact that he was raised from the dead is how we can know that what he said was true. Pastor Allen talked to us on Easter about how our faith is evidence-based. We do not have blind faith. We believe in things, and there's evidence these things are true.

9:51And number four, we can be made right with God. We can be restored to relationship with God by putting our faith and trust in Jesus, not by doing good things. That's like super good news for me because like I've met me and I've done a bunch of bad stuff. I dress up, I mean, okay, on Sunday, I guess, but like, you know, I have a wife and children who see me 24-7, 365. And I interact with other people in the world, and we all, in fact, fall short of God's perfect standard. It's not about...

10:30Whether we can earn our way to heaven is about putting our faith in what Jesus has done for us. Now, I think that Americans often don't really understand the words faith and believe. So, when I talk to, and maybe it's because I'm in a university context or whatever, but when I talk to people about faith, they often sort of think like, can you answer a multiple choice test about Jesus correctly? Or a true, false test? Was Jesus the Son of God? Oh, yeah, true, got that one right. All right, was he crucified? True. Was he raised from the dead? True. Woohoo! I got the test right. That's not what faith is. That's not what faith is. Faith is not intellectual assent to a bunch of principles about Jesus or God or the Bible or anything. So I'll tell you a little story that I think hopefully will highlight a bit about what I think faith is. So I love my birthday. Just going to say that. I love my birthday. I'm really excited about my birthday every year. And so when I became a professor at the Air Force Academy, I moved out west to Colorado, and like, nobody did anything for my birthday. Now, in fairness, like, probably nobody knew when my birthday was, but I was like, really sad. So I decided that I was going to each year appoint a cadet to be in charge of my birthday.

12:00Yes. So this is normal behavior, right? Come on. Like, why are you all laughing at me? Anyway, so one year, Blair Watkinson was in charge of my birthday. Blair was a faithful computer science major in Bible study. And so I knew, and I didn't have a lot of standards. I didn't have to be anything bad. I just wanted something to happen on my birthday, like somebody would remember my birthday. So we roll into Saturday night, March 4th. Saturday night, March 4th. And so far as I know, I've heard nothing from Blair about what's going to go down on Sunday, March 5th, my birthday. And the people who are in charge of the ministry, they pull me aside and they're like, Marty, why don't you just come to our house tomorrow for lunch? I'm like, I can't do that. Something is happening tomorrow. Right?

12:55And they're like, no. I'm like, no, no, Blair's going to do something. Blair has forgotten about you. Like, you should just come to our house for lunch tomorrow. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. No, like, no. And so finally, they relented to let me invite Blair to lunch at their house tomorrow. Little did I know, okay, little did I know, this was going to be a surprise party for my birthday, right? And so over the course of the evening, they let me invite more and more people to my surprise party for my birthday. Now, what's my point here what is my point my point was was I was confident I was confident that Blair was going to do something for my birthday right I had faith that Blair was going to do something for my birthday even if there was no evidence I knew the character of Blair and I knew he was going to come through that's what God wants from us they he wants us to know his character to know for sure that he will deliver on his promises know for sure he will deliver on his promises even when it maybe seems like he won't even when it sort of seems like maybe the things the world has to offer are better we should be all in for Jesus all in for Jesus okay so that was my little reference to Texas Hold him I'm not a gambler but you know all in right all in okay so what do we what do our choices say about whether we're all in for Jesus what do our choices say at the office in the bedroom when we do our taxes what do our choices say about what we really believe about Jesus and his word we may mess up sometimes we may even sin grievously but who do we go back to when those things happen that's What faith is really about? Like, what is the anchor point in your life? Who do you count on when the chips are down, if I will?

15:10All right, so that is the doctrine that they have been taught. People are going to come up and they're going to put obstacles in the way of this, they're going to cause divisions. What are the ways that people do that? Now, in Paul's time, some people said, quite a lot of people actually, that you had to become a Jew to be a follower of Jesus. Right? Paul spends a lot of time talking about this. Do you have to be circumcised? Do you have to observe particular holidays? Do you have to avoid certain foods? And do you have to avoid meat sacrificed to idols? Paul vigorously countered adding these obstacles to faith.

15:54Nowadays, some people might say you have to vote a certain way or support a particular politician to be a good Christian or have particular views on particular political topics. And unfortunately, since the time of Jesus, there has been an enormous amount of division in the church. If we look at just Baptists, Wikipedia lists 23 Baptist denominations that have over 500 churches in them. We have put a lot of division in the body of Christ. So, what we're going to do now is we're going to explore some examples, stories of things that have happened in my time doing campus ministry at the Air Force Academy, where I've tried to live out the difference between Romans 14, where it talks about not judging others and seeking peace and mutual edification, and Romans 16, where we are today, watching out for those who create divisions and obstacles contrary to the doctrine we've been taught. So, and so some of the names have been changed to protect the people. So, I'll just say some names and we'll just go with that. So, first, we're going to talk about Bob. So, I met Bob in the navigators here at Texas AM. And so, my wife and I volunteer with them. It's an on-campus ministry that tells students about Jesus and helps them to tell others about Jesus. So, Bob decided that the doctrine of the navigators wasn't sufficiently narrow. So, he started coming to new life. Yay!

17:39And he joined our life group. And then, you know, Bob decided, gosh, I really like you guys, but you baptize adults and not babies. And so, I'm like, Bob, look, you're like going to be a senior. You don't have a girlfriend. You ain't having a baby anytime soon. You've got Christian fellowship here. You should not think. Throw that all away for your senior year before you move off to somewhere else. Like, sure, you know, graduate, move off somewhere else, be a Presbyterian, it's fine. But, like, why throw away all the relationships that you have right now for that? Unfortunately, Bob didn't listen to me. He was like, I have to pursue my theological purity. And so he went off to another church for a year.

18:28One of the things that I appreciate about our work here at New Life, or how I do things here at New Life, is communion. So I, you may not know this, I come from a family of old school Southern Baptists. I'm a Yankee, right? I was born in Delaware. My mother calls me the foreigner. Well, she's no longer with us, but she used to call me the foreigner. And so, you know, her whole heritage is in Kentucky old school Southern Baptists. We don't drink, smoke, or chew, or date girls who do.

19:06Right? I tried that on a few students this week. They told me they'd never heard of that before. Anyway, so communion, right? So we have communion both with wine and grape juice. Now, there are people who come from backgrounds of alcoholism, who come from particular cultures, who, for those reasons, will not drink wine. Wine, even in little tiny cups on Sunday. And we want them to fellowship with us and participate in our gospel community. So we offer them the opportunity to have grape juice. And they don't look down on those of us who drink wine, and we don't look down on those of us who choose grape juice. I think that's a great example of where we've tried to model this, not putting an obstacle in the way of someone participating in the gospel and honoring our neighbors.

20:08When I was at the Air Force Academy, one of my dearest friends was a cadet named Hansen. I remember vividly meeting Hansen. I was teaching from the Bible on a Saturday night. I think I was actually probably teaching on either this passage that Alan just covered on greeting one another with a holy kiss or one of the other, actually, numerous times that appears in the Old Testament. And so, you know, I love my brother Alan dearly, but I have always believed that a firm handshake is not really what Paul was talking about there. And so, you know, and I was talking about like how my dad is a hugger, right? And like, I'm a hug. And there was this guy out there who like lit up, and I was like, there is a fellow hugger, right? Like, and so I got to know. Him. He actually came to my wedding, was in like the Sabre Arch at the end of the semester. Dear friend, he came from a church that at the time I didn't understand was like not just like super duper weird and isolated, but it was from what's called the Hebrew Roots Movement. And so in the Hebrew Roots movement, they believe that the Mosaic law should still be followed. You should still observe the festivals. They actually, that family builds booths in their backyard to celebrate the Feast of Booze. They abstain from pork. They worship on Saturday.

21:41But at the Air Force Academy, he was one of my dearest friends. We worshiped together. We prayed together. He did not go around telling everybody they had to worship like he did. I didn't serve hot dogs when he came to my house. Like, we chose to be in fellowship together for the gospel, and we didn't put obstacles in each other's way. We didn't have division. Another thing, there was a church across the highway from the Air Force Academy. Big church. And so a number of our cadets went there and they started, you know, talking to their friends. And there was this notion that if you really want to have The Holy Spirit, you have to speak in tongues. And that is the sign that God has given you the gifts of the Spirit. Now, this is a problem. This is a problem biblically, because, you know, Paul tells the church at Corinth not to forbid speaking in tongues. And he says, not everybody speaks in tongues. It's pretty clear. And so this could have been a real rift. in our fellowship because we have people going to this church, people not going to this church, coming from different backgrounds on tongues. So what I chose to do is I grabbed one of our leaders who attended that church, and we taught a series. We taught a series on Saturday nights out of Corinthians on speaking in tongues, and we made sure that people knew, like, this is not an issue we are going to divide on. Let's look at what the scriptures say. We're not going to put an obstacle in the way of people who don't speak in tongues and tell them they're not really Christians. That's not okay. We're not going to tell people who are exercising spiritual gifts they can't do that. That's not okay.

23:44We continued in fellowship together. Now, there are a number of stories there where things have sort of like worked out all happy, happy, happy, joy, joy. But that's not how it always worked. We had some students who went to churches that taught you could become a God, or that Christianity was a way of obtaining wealth and prosperity. And we had to warn students about those churches and about those teachings, and some people left. Now, note that what this passage says is that we need to avoid people who do these divisions. It doesn't say we need to fight with them. It doesn't say we need to go to war or whatever.

24:34I have seen God supernaturally heal people. I have seen people who God didn't supernaturally heal. In Paul's writings, we see Epaphroditus is healed from a near-death sickness. We see Trophimus was left behind sick at Miletus, and that Paul himself has a thorn in the flesh that God allows to persist so he won't become proud. In particular, the health and prosperity preachers created real obstacles of the gospel for cadets because people were then ill-prepared to handle adversity in their lives.

25:09When adversity came, what did you have to decide? You had to decide that you were wrong, that your faith was bad, or the gospel wasn't true. None of those were the right answer. That was a real obstacle that people put in front of the gospel. And in the 1800s, I don't know if you've studied any American history, but the 1800s was a prime time for generating obstacles to the gospel that exist to this very day. You can still find them here in town. So one woman founded a religion which says the material world is an illusion. Here's a quote from their journal, quote, death is only a mythological misconception, which is just a fancy way of saying it's an illusion. To human perception, of course, it seems inescapable, concrete reality. But it can't be true because God, the only creator, is eternal life and man is God's likeness. What appears to be death then must be an illusion. Right? That is not what the gospel is about. The gospel is not about if you just believe enough, you will realize that sickness and death aren't real. Right? The gospel is about if you put your faith in Jesus, then you can be resurrected to live eternally in a new body, new heavens, new earth, forever with Jesus. That's the gospel. This is a clear obstacle to the gospel. They put Christian in their name. They are not.

26:40A man in the 1800s founded a religion and predicted that Jesus would come back in 1878. Then he decided to go for 1914. Now you just missed it. It really happened. Jesus is not God, they say, and did not have a bodily. Resurrection. You have to live faithfully to live forever in paradise. Did you hear that last one? You have to live faithfully to live forever in paradise. What they say is that you earn your salvation. You earn your salvation. That is not Christian doctrine.

27:19Another man founded religion and told people: if you obey God's commands, you can become a God yourself. That ain't how it works. That is an obstacle to the gospel. We can go back further, a few hundred years back, 1517. Martin Luther says, You cannot buy your way into heaven by giving money. You cannot buy your way into heaven by giving money. It's vain, quote, it is vain to trust in salvation by indulgence letters. This reminds me of what Peter said in Acts chapter 8 to Simon the sorcerer: May your money perish with you because you thought you could buy the gift of God with money.

28:04Similarly, some today preach that you can pray to the dead and that the dead will intercede to God on your behalf. They fail to recognize what Paul wrote in 1 Timothy 2, verse 5: There is one mediator between God and man, namely Jesus Christ. Now, in verse 18, Paul talks about the motives of the false teachers. Such persons do not serve our Lord Christ but their own appetites, and by smooth talk and flattery, they deceive the hearts of the naive. I did some research on this. It was really kind of depressing, actually. And it's probably not helpful for me to list the many names of pastors who've been convicted of fraud, embezzlement, investment scams, or who have not restrained their sexual appetites.

28:54So instead, what I'm going to encourage you to do is ask a couple questions and figure out, like, do I need to find another church? So the first question is, is the church transparent about how it pays its pastors? And the second question is, do the pastors show ostentatious wealth? Mansions, luxury cars, private jets? You have a private jet, right, Pastor John? So if you see those things, that's a danger. That's a warning sign, right? I am very grateful that we here are very transparent about how we pay our pastors. I generally don't think pastors get paid enough, but we certainly don't pay them so they live in ostentatious wealth. And the gospel, preachers of the gospel should not be displaying ostentatious wealth.

29:50And certainly, if anyone tells you that you should give to their ministry so that you can be rich, you need to flee running as fast as you can. Verse 19, Paul says, For your obedience is known to all, so that I rejoice over you. I want you to be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. So, oh, I'm sorry, I skipped ahead. Wise was good and innocent was evil. And so, similarly, we see in Matthew chapter 10, verse 16, Behold, I am sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves, so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.

30:36In that context, Jesus is talking about coming persecution. Here, Paul is talking about dealing with false teachers. The Roman church was a church that was obedient, and so he didn't want them to be led astray by people who would use that submissive, gentle spirit to teach them things that were false. We need to be innocent as doves, but we also need to be wise as serpents so we can discern when people are leading us astray. Verse 20, Paul says, the God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. So it's always helpful to remember the end of the story. When time gets hard, when times get hard, remember the end of the story. At the end of the time, we... Win. We win. Now, when I say we win, it's sort of like: imagine if we decided to have like pickup basketball two-on-two this afternoon in a park, right? And I go out there with LeBron James, right? We win.

31:49I didn't really do much, but we win. That's what it's like. At the end of time, we win because Jesus is on our team. Right? When times get hard, remember the end. We win, we win because Jesus is on our team. In verses 21 through 23, Paul moves on to some greetings. And Pastor Alan did an admirable job of walking us through a collection of greetings last week that Paul did. I'm not going to introduce you to all of these people, but what I really want you to understand is the New Testament. Here's our sub-point. We can hit that slide up there. The New Testament is about real people who are witnesses of Jesus. These aren't stories. These are real people who are witnesses of Jesus. As Alan told us, we have an evidence-based faith based on people who were eyewitnesses to Jesus' life, death, and resurrection.

32:55We believe these things to be historical facts. Now, I am not a historian. Nor am I an archaeologist. But when I was preparing for today's sermon, I came across this feature from the American Journal of Archaeology in 1929. Alright, so this is a paving stone. This is a paving stone in the city of Corinth that was excavated in 1929. And it reads, it's in Latin, it reads, Erastus procurator Aedile laid the pavement at his own expense.

33:37So we don't know for sure that this is the Erastus that is being talked about in Romans chapter 16, but there are an awful lot of coincidences to be considered here. Most scholars believe that Paul wrote to the Romans from Corinth around AD 56. As far as we know, Erastus is not quite like John. It's not like everybody's name. And this dude would have been a man of wealth. So it's possible, maybe even probable, that this pavement stone that we dug up in 1929 is a reference to the dude Paul wrote about in AD 56.

34:30Okay, so again, I cannot emphasize enough, the gospel is an evidence-based faith. We're dealing with real people who were eyewitnesses of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection. It's not stories that were made up hundreds of years later. So, in conclusion, I have two key points that we talked about today. The first is you should watch out for those who cause divisions and create obstacles to the gospel. Watch out, avoid these people. Hold fast to the truth of the gospel, that you can be made right with God by faith in the life, death, and resurrection of God's Son Jesus. And number two, the New Testament, this gospel, the New Testament was written by real people who were eyewitnesses of the things that they were talking about.

35:28So, if you are already a follower of Jesus, be all in for Jesus. That is what you should have as your confidence who you go back to when time is hard. And you should avoid people who will add obstacles or create divisions. If you aren't a follower of Jesus, consider the testimony of people from that. Time all the way to today about what Jesus has done and how you can be made right with God. There's any number of us who would love to talk with you about that after the service. Let's pray.

36:17God, we thank you for today. We thank you for this opportunity to come together to worship you. We thank you for your word. We thank you for the people who have testified to what they've seen and heard, and that you have preserved that to today. We pray, Lord, that you'd give us opportunities to tell others about Jesus, that we would see people come to faith. Thank you for all these things in Jesus' name. Amen. Thank you for listening to the sermon audio from New Life Baptist Church in College Station, Texas.

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