Welcome to Delight in Grace, the teaching ministry of Rich Powell, pastor of Grace Bible Church in Winston-Salem. In school, you may have read the famous epic poem called The Iliad. In it, Homer tells of a brilliant ploy the Greeks used to break into the enemy city of Troy.
The Greeks sent a gift to the Trojans, a massive wooden horse. But the gift was the downfall of the Trojans for inside the horse, the Greek soldiers were hiding. See, the Trojans opened themselves up to the enemy, falling for this great deception.
But our enemy uses similar tactics, doesn't he? We're not usually tempted to believe lies that are blatantly false. Satan often wraps his lies in a cloak of truth. Peter addresses this very concern in 2 Peter 2, 1-3. He warns his readers that false teachers will secretly introduce false teachings among them. Distortions of God's revealed truth often water down his word or deny key truths within it. Today, Pastor Rich lays out the damage such distortions bring to the one who believes them. And he shares with us how to recognize and counter the subtle lies that come our way.
Let's listen to this message titled The Impact of Lies. This is part three of a message first preached on August 27, 2023 at Grace Bible Church in Winston-Salem. Lies, they suppress, they ignore the supremacy, the sufficiency, and the sovereignty of Jesus.
And they abound today. Number three, lies degrade humanity and the image of God. Verse two, and many will follow their sensuality. Many will follow their sensuality. Jude chapter four, for certain people have crept in unnoticed who pervert the grace of God into sensuality. Let me just comment on that for a moment, what he means, what the scriptures mean by sensuality. It's just simply when we think of sensuality, we think of pornography, you know, lust and all that stuff. That's a part of it.
That's a part of it. And for some of us, it might be, well, I don't have a trouble with that. So here's what sensuality is. It's being driven by your senses. It reduces you. If you are driven purely by your senses, you reduce yourself to the level of an animal. And you suppress the image of God. This is what the adversary of our soul wants us to do.
Jude 18, in the last times there will be scoffers following their own ungodly passions. It's all about me. It's all about what I want. It's all about what I feel. It's not about truth. It's not about principle.
It's not about sound reason. It's all about what I want because of how I feel. I'm going to read a few paragraphs and I ask you to forebear with me from Rod Dreher's book, Live Not by Lies. And Rod Dreher is talking about, and even quoting in some parts, American sociologist and cultural critic Philip Rife. He says, in his landmark book, and this was from 1966, the book was called The Triumph of the Therapeutic, Rife said, the death of God in the West had given birth to a new civilization devoted to liberating the individual to seek his own pleasures and to manage emergent anxieties. Religious man who lived according to belief in transcendent principles that ordered human life around communal purposes, had given way to psychological man who believed that there was no transcendent order and that life's purpose was to find one's own way experimentally. Man no longer understood himself to be a pilgrim on the meaningful journey with others, but as a tourist who traveled through life according to his own self-designed itinerary with personal happiness, his ultimate goal.
To what degree have you bought into that? Personal happiness is your ultimate goal. And some of you may think, Rich, doesn't God want us to be happy?
Yes, but where's that happiness coming from? There is no sacred order. If there is no sacred order, then the original promise of the serpent in the garden, you shall be like gods, is the foundational principle to this new culture. Even church leaders, he wrote, were lying to themselves about the ability of the institutions that they led to resist. Reif foresaw the future of religion as a devolution into watery spirituality which could accommodate anything.
Reif lived long enough to see his 1966 prediction come true. In 2005, the sociologists of religion, Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton, coined a phrased moralistic therapeutic deism to describe the decadent form that Christianity had taken in contemporary America. It consisted of the general belief that God exists and wants nothing more from us than to be nice and happy. I hope there's nobody in here saying, what's wrong with that? We are to be nice.
We are to be. God wants our joy. In this kind of culture, which has everywhere triumphed, the great sin, here it is, the great sin is to stand in the way of the freedom of others to find happiness as they wish.
This goal, hand in hand with the sexual revolution, which along with the ethnic and gender identity politics, replaced the failed economic class struggle as the utopian focus of the post 60s radical left. And on and on it goes. The whole point in that lie is self is supreme. And many, even Christians can easily buy into that lie.
We even use our Christianity to exalt ourselves and to please ourselves. It is a lie. If I believe that my happiness is my highest good, in whatever way I can achieve it, then I have bought into a lie. What is my highest good and my deepest satisfaction? But God himself. And if I don't believe that if I believe that my highest good is my happiness, then what follows is that all of my behavior is in pursuit of one ambition and that is that I must affirm me.
And you must too. That, folks, is exactly what we're seeing become the dominant force in our culture today. It is a lie. By the grace of God, we must not participate in it. Lies degrade humanity and the image of God. Number three, here's number four, lies cast a shadow on godliness. Lies cast a shadow on godliness, or godly or righteous living.
Lies cast a shadow on it. The way of truth will be blasphemed, says in verse two. Faithfully following Jesus Christ is reviled as something odd, if not dangerous today.
Good is called evil and evil is called good, as Isaiah says in 5-20. Paul said, he writes to Timothy, 2 Timothy 3-12, indeed all who desire to live godly life in Christ, Jesus, will be persecuted. And to faithfully follow Jesus, you can easily be called bigoted, you can be called uncaring, you can be called bad for the community. And in elements of Christianity, there are those who are buying into this thinking that we need to make the gospel relevant.
Let me stop and say something here, okay? We don't make the gospel relevant. The gospel is inherently relevant. But what they want us to believe is that truth is determined by human sensibilities and poles. It is a lie.
Lie number, effect number five. Lies use people for selfish gain. Many will follow their sensuality and because of them, the way of truth will be blasphemed, verse three, and in their greed, they will exploit you with false words. Lies use people for selfish gain.
There is a commercialized Christianity in our world today, and people are being trafficked into what they think faith is by personal kingdom builders. People are attracted to energy. It's not necessarily a bad thing, but it requires discernment. People are attracted to energy and they're attracted to novelty as well.
And so when they see both of those together, they're attracted to it. But we also know, as the apostle wrote, that in the last times, people will be flocking to those teachers who will tell them exactly what they want to hear. And they want to hear the theological equivalent of cotton candy.
My apologies to you if you love cotton candy, but it is not good for the nourishment of your soul. Lies use people for selfish gain. Not to be said on that, but let me continue here as we draw this to a conclusion today. He says, look at the end of verse three, their condemnation from long ago is not idle and their destruction is not asleep.
There is a big picture. God is true. God is the triumphant sovereign of the universe.
He's a benevolent sovereign. There is an enemy of the soul who wants us to believe lies. Some of those lies will come in a Christian rapping. Loved ones, this requires our vigilance and our discernment.
Two points as I conclude today. The clearest way to recognize lies is to know truth. To know truth. One of my favorite texts in scripture, Colossians 3 16, let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, in all of its richness.
Let it dwell in you. This does not mean that it's just lodged in there. It does not mean that someone can just say, I know the scriptures. It's not what it's talking about. It's one thing to know the scriptures. It's an entirely different thing if the truths of scriptures have captivated you to the point of transforming your affections and your attitudes. Thanks for joining us here at Delight in Grace. You've been listening to Rich Powell, the lead pastor at Grace Bible Church in Winston-Salem. The Delight in Grace mission is to help you know that God designed you to realize your highest good and your deepest satisfaction in him. The one who is infinitely good. We hope you'll join us again on weekdays at 10 a.m.
