August 18, 2025 • 34 mins
What happens when we reduce Jesus to merely a powerful deity rather than our sovereign Lord? While exploring Philippians 2:5-11, we dive into why this passage became the most quoted text among early church fathers as they defended essential Christian doctrine against dangerous heresies.
This episode examines how the early church confronted four major heresies—Docetism, Arianism, Nestorianism, and Gnosticism—and why their modern versions continue threatening orthodox faith today. From moral relativism that subjectively redefines sin to syncretism that blends Christianity with other religious practices, these repackaged ancient errors undermine biblical truth in subtle but devastating ways.
How do we guard against these influences? By distinguishing between "closed-hand" non-negotiable doctrines and "open-hand" matters where Christians can respectfully disagree. We must reject modernity's pressure to innovate doctrine, submit to wise spiritual leaders, remain comfortable with divine mystery, and pursue Christ with both love and reverent fear.
My hope is that this podcast helps grow your faith and equips you to accomplish your dreams and goals!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
Welcome to another part of my Philippians study
that I have been doing with ourstaff at Staff Chapel.
If you haven't listened to theother parts, you might want to
go back deeper into my podcast,check out those episodes and
catch yourself up to join wherewe're at today.
All right, let's jump intoPhilippians.
(00:29):
We're going to continue ourstudy.
Today.
We're going to be inPhilippians, chapter 2.
Philippians, chapter 2.
We're going to read 5 through11.
5 through 11.
Philippians 2.
5 through 11.
And just a quick for us toremember.
To sum up, the whole Bible, theOld Testament, or really the
whole Bible.
(00:49):
We've got God's law, which isthe first five books of the
Bible.
Then we've got God's people.
Next is God's wisdom.
Then we have God's prophetscalling back his people, god's
son, which is the four gospels.
God's church, which is whatwe're studying right now.
And revelation is God's comingback, and so, um, for us to know
, that's the whole summary ofthe Bible.
So when we look at the wholestory of scripture, um, that
(01:12):
kind of helps us look at wherewe're at in the story.
So right now we've beenstudying God's church and we're
in Philippians, chapter two,verses five through 11.
And it says let this mind be inyou, which was also in Christ
Jesus who, being in the form ofGod, did not consider it robbery
to be equal with God, but madehimself of no reputation.
(01:36):
Taking the form of a bondservant and coming in the
likeness of men and being foundin appearance as a man, he
humbled himself and becameobedient to the point of death,
even death of the cross.
Therefore, god also has highlyexalted him and given him the
name which is above every name.
Now, at the name of Jesus,every knee should bow, and of
(01:59):
those in heaven and those onearth and those under the earth,
everybody's going to proclaimthat he's Lord at the end of all
this, and that every tongueshould confess that Jesus Christ
is Lord to the glory of God,the father.
Okay, so, um with this, uh,just for you to know, like this
passage of scripture is actuallyquoted more than any other
(02:21):
passage.
Um with the early church fathers, and so, whenever they put
together the canon, sometimespeople question like how
accurate is the canon?
Well, just so you know, likethe New Testament and many
pieces of scripture, what we didwhen they were putting together
the Bible to check theauthenticity of it is they
looked at early church patristicfathers and their writings,
(02:42):
because they would write out thetext in their what would be
called their targums, becausethey would write out the text in
their what would be calledtheir targums, and so they would
write out the text that theywere going to preach off of, and
then they put all thosetogether, which helps form our
canon, to give us assurance thatwhat we're reading today was
actually what Paul wrote.
And the patristic fathers usethis set of scripture so much,
and the reason why is becauseit's all about Jesus and they
(03:06):
are in this time period, theyare wanting to confront heresies
and different things that we'regoing to look at.
But I would just say to you,like, when you go to this
portion of scripture, this wouldbe like the crowning moment of
Philippians, like this is a bigdeal, like everything Paul's
saying.
It kind of revolves around thisof who Christ is.
So I want you to notice themovement of the text.
(03:26):
In 5 through 7, it explains themystery of the incarnation and
he is the highest.
So the movement of the text isupward.
The incarnation, it's upwardmovement of the text.
But verse 8, we see it movinglower.
And he began, he being found inappearance of a man.
So incarnation, talking aboutall of who he is, his divinity
(04:11):
is high, then now he's beingformed, it goes lower, then 8
spot high, so high and there'snot a spot so low that Christ is
not divine and superior overall.
So the movement of the text,basically Paul's letting us know
we're going upward, we'recoming down, we're going to
every single place and everysingle one of those places he is
(04:32):
divine, he is holy, he is theson of God and just exalting it
in our minds Sometimes it's kindof like the taunt of the people
in the Old Testament.
They said God is the God of themountains, but is he the God of
the valleys?
Meaning there's high placesthat our God can be God, but is
he in the low places?
And Paul's basically sayingthere's not a single place you
can go, as David would writethat you could escape his
(04:53):
presence, that he is allpowerful, he is all divine.
So Jesus is Lord.
He's letting us know Jesus isLord, elohim.
There's two words for this Lord, there's Elohim.
There's two words for this Lordthere's Elohim and there's
Jehovah.
Elohim would be the word forall powerful, all resource, all
wisdom, but Lord is Jehovah andthis is lordship, and lordship
(05:17):
expresses the unity of allpeople saying that he is Lord.
Lordship is me declaring I willobey the path and the way of
Jesus.
So whenever is I think in ourculture, our society, we're okay
with calling him Elohim.
We have a hard time calling himJehovah.
And even in I've been inEcclesiastes vanity, vanity,
(05:41):
everything's vanity.
I studied it yesterday forhours.
I'm like deep in it.
But the interesting thing aboutKohelet in Ecclesiastes is he
only calls God Elohim and heopens up Ecclesiastes that I,
solomon, having all wisdom,having all resources, having all
(06:09):
wisdom, having all resources,having all power, did these
things.
And then in Ecclesiastes,chapter two, he basically goes
through the creation story asthough he's God.
So he's saying I am my ownElohim and he only refers to God
as Elohim all powerful, allwisdom, all resource.
But the key in our Christianwalk is not just acknowledging
(06:31):
him as Elohim, but it's taking astep further that he is Jehovah
, that he's Lord.
So meaning that Lordship is medeclaring I will obey the path
and the way of Jesus.
Perhaps the reason why thewriter Kohelet of Ecclesiastes
deconstructed so hard is he wasokay with him being Elohim but
(06:55):
never stepped into Jehovah.
And Jehovah means that I have arelationship with him which
even in Ecclesiastes, never onetime does he talk to God.
He talks about God, which is awhole nother thing.
Demons always talked about God.
Look in scripture.
They never talked to him.
And there's a difference.
When we sing songs about Godbut not to him, we're all.
(07:19):
Do you feel what I'm sayinghere?
But here he's letting us knowthat he is Jehovah, he is Lord,
he is not just all powerful,he's not just Elohim, he is my
Lord and I'm going to obey theway and the path of Jesus.
So this was a common scripture.
Again, it was quoted by manyearly church fathers.
Chris Austin says this.
(07:40):
He says this of this passage ofscripture.
He says how can the wretchedsay that Christ's existence
began from Mary?
This implies that before thishe did not exist, but Paul says,
being the form of God, he tookon the form of a slave.
A lot of people had a hard timein the early church believing
(08:03):
that Christ existed before Mary,that this began the exaltation
of Mary, that as though she wasthe creator of Christ.
And he's like no, before therewas Mary, there was Christ, like
he existed before.
And the next church father thatwe have is Tertullian and he
says suppose the terms figure,image of fashion, likeness and
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form referred merely to aphantom, there would then have
been no substance to Christ'shumanity.
But in this case, figure,likeness and form all point to
the reality of his humanity.
He is truly God as son of thefather, in his figure and image.
He is truly man as the son ofman.
(08:44):
We look at the person of Christand that's what Paul's setting
down.
I know that sometimes we'relike, yeah, I've heard that, I
know it.
But sometimes our lives, right,like what we're living, our
(09:05):
orthopraxy doesn't line up withour orthodoxy.
And the more my orthodoxy, mythoughts about Christ align with
who he is, my orthopraxy, theliving, the outliving of it, my
practice, will begin to align.
So he's saying hey, guys, likewhatever you're questioning
about who God is, look in theperson of Jesus, like he is the
exact representation.
(09:26):
And then we have Epiphanius ofSalamis and it says the word
tasted death once on our behalf.
I love this.
The death of the cross.
He went to his death so that bydeath he might be, he might put
to death, to death the wordbecoming human flesh did not
(09:46):
suffer in his divinity butsuffered with humanity.
I love that he was.
This early church father wasalive in 400 AD when he wrote
this, and so why did so manychurch fathers, why were they so
emphatic about preaching andteaching off of this text?
You think about how manyletters Paul wrote.
(10:08):
Why was this the common place?
Well, the reason why is becauseorthodoxy my orthodoxy needs to
be rooted in right beliefs, and, without knowing it, the
biggest threat that happenedwhenever you read through church
history and still today,because we're a part of that
history the biggest threat tothe church wasn't what was
(10:28):
happening outside the church, itwas the orthodoxy that was
slipping within the church, andif we aren't guarding ourselves
from wrong doctrines, thenbefore we know it, we're
drifting from what Christ set todo.
And so they weren't worriedabout persecution of the church.
They weren't worried aboutgovernment.
(10:49):
They weren't worried aboutthose things.
They were worried about theheresies that were slipping in
amongst the people, and so theearly church fathers were
concerned with orthodoxy.
I think we have a famine of thiswithin the church today.
There's so little understandingof scripture and articulation
around scripture, and I thinkfor all of us, I think it's so
(11:09):
important for us to come back tothis and defend the faith that
we've been entrusted to carry.
We're not carrying a new faith,we're carrying a message that's
2,000 years old, like, and ourjob is to guard it.
But how can we guard it if wedon't even know if what we're
believing is true?
We're believing whatever'strending on Instagram or on X or
(11:30):
on Facebook, or we're just beenpassed down to us, and so
heresy confronting the earlychurch was these four things
Docetism this is Jesus' body wasa mirage.
He was only a spiritual beingFor docetists it was so taboo.
When you see pictures of, whenyou see paintings of the Christ
(11:53):
child, take note of the date,because for hundreds of years it
was taboo to paint Jesus as ababy.
And even whenever you go to anart museum, you'll notice that
the baby even the earlypaintings of the Christ child he
has a man head.
It looks like he's like aminiature man.
He's a tiny person.
I don't know what you'reallowed to call him anymore, but
(12:15):
you know he's that he's a tinyperson.
I don't know what you'reallowed to call him anymore, but
you know he's, that he'svertically challenged, so he
looks like a man, but he'sobviously a baby because he's
tinier and he's sitting on thelap of Mary, oftentimes because
for them it was so offensive tothink that Christ was a baby and
Docetus basically believed thathe was a spiritual being like
(12:39):
he never took on earthly form.
That was so wild to them.
And so, which is sad, becausein 1 Timothy 2, 5, it says that
he makes mediation between usand God.
And so if he didn't take on theform of man, and it even
confronts that he, he knew allof our sufferings like he knew
it, he took it on, he bore it inhis flesh.
(13:00):
If he was just spiritual, thenthere's no atonement for sin
because there was no sacrifice.
So the docetists, even thoughthey were well-meaning and just
know that, all of these heresiesthat were creeping into the
early church, where they hadpure intentions because they
were trying to take somethingcomplex and make it simple for
somebody to understand, andtoday still that's what's
(13:21):
happening.
It's like we're trying to takethe complexity of Christ and
simplify it down.
And then there is Arianism.
And this was Jesus was the sonof God, but not co-eternal with
God, because he was a createdbeing.
The offspring of this would besimilar, would be Mormonism.
Mormons believe this similaridea because they have a hard
(13:42):
time recognizing that he isdivine, that he is equal with
God, that in their brain theycan't even imagine that they
think, because he was created,he's lesser, that he's like a
watered down version, but webelieve that he's co-equal with
(14:03):
God, that he is, but at the sametime he is submitted to the
father.
It's like this paradox of thetwo going hand in hand, this
balance that we have to keep.
Then there's Nestorianism, andthis is Jesus was a person, but
he was chosen by the Holy Spiritto be the Son of God, which
just makes me eye roll reallyhard.
(14:29):
The Council of Ephesusconfronted this heresy in 431 AD
and this played out today inthe overemphasis of Christ's
humanity.
So we see this same idea ofwhen people overemphasize in
their teachings about Christbeing a man just like us, but we
miss out the part of hisdivinity, that, yes, he was like
us, but he knew not sin.
Like it's like it's the twogoing together.
It's like this is like we makeJesus our best friend kind of
(14:49):
mentality Of like he's just likeme.
It's like that whole campaignthat they did around the Super
Bowl he gets us and yes, butalso no, because even though he
understands me, he's on a levelthat I can never reach, and so
there's a measure of him that isunknown to me because I've
(15:11):
never lived as a divine being.
Does this make sense?
And so this is the overemphasisof Christ's humanity.
And then in this, they forgetthat Christ had difficult days.
This like blew my mind theother day.
I was in a counseling sessionand I was just talking about
trauma with my counselor, mytrauma, and we were just talking
(15:35):
and she goes.
Well, crystal, she said thinkabout Christ whenever he's in
the garden and he's about to goto the cross and he's losing it
on his disciples, he's like canyou not pray with me for one
hour?
And she goes.
His response she goes.
Could we just consider that?
(15:56):
That was like a trauma response.
It was coming out of a place ofpain.
He felt abandoned and all of asudden I go, oh my gosh, he felt
abandoned.
I said this is the trauma fromwhen his mom left him, like as a
young boy.
And all of a sudden I was like,could it be that Christ in the
cross, that that feeling ofabandonment from a child at 13
(16:19):
carried over then at his placeof deepest pain?
And all of a sudden I told herI was like I'm so shook right
now just at the thought thatJesus would have a trauma
response but yet he was stillsinless, but that he knows our
trauma and that we have painthat makes us respond in a way
that we wouldn't normallyrespond.
Are you following me?
And it's that Jesus had harddays just like us and yes, he
(16:43):
did, and it's beautiful to paintthat.
But the fine line that we don'tstep into this heresy is that
he experienced that traumaresponse and he still didn't sin
.
Does this make sense?
I don't make him so like methat I'm like it's okay that I
sin when I have the traumaresponse.
Does this make sense?
But he is divine and he did notsin.
(17:06):
Gnosticism I believe this isstill prevalent in the church
today, and this is you needspecial knowledge that isn't in
the Bible for understanding ofGod.
Gnostics also believe thateverything spiritual is good,
everything material is bad, andso Gnostics they basically
they're like God told mesomething, just believe me,
because they have special insideknowledge that nobody else has,
(17:30):
and so you hear people say thatall the time They'll be like
they have this special unicornversion of interpretation of the
Bible that is, in.
It's incongruent with any ofthe early church fathers or
church tradition.
But they're like just believeme, just believe me, I'm a
Gnostic, but heresies of todayand the ancient heretics.
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The difference between a heresytoday and early heresy is
ancient heretics didn't knowthey were being a heretic and
they were just.
They were just doing the bestthey could.
Even Paul confronted Peter tohis face.
Galatians, chapter two wouldsay.
Peter didn't know he was beinga heretic.
He was being confronted becausewhat he was doing is trying to
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make the gospel messageapplicable, make the Jews feel
comfortable with the Gentiles,but in doing so he was watering
down what the word was tellingthem to do.
Are we okay?
Am I talking over you or to you?
To you, okay, all right, I'mtrying to keep it.
We're good, okay, so modernheresy combines multiple
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heresies.
That's the difference.
The first one that's confrontingus today that we have to guard
ourselves against is moralrelativism.
Moral relativism I think thisis the most prevalent and this
is a sexual truth comes fromwithin and must be accepted and
celebrated.
And I would say it's not justquarantine to sexual sin.
(18:52):
I think it's most sin.
It's not just quarantine tosexual sin, I think it's most
sin.
It's like, well, I don't feelconvicted about that, like it's
fine.
It's literally the lady that Imet with.
She's like, yes, I'mfornicating, yes, I'm like doing
things outside of marriage thatI should be doing, but God
(19:14):
wants me happy.
That's moral relativism.
And in culture today it's justthey say morality is subjective
to cultures and individualopinions that what's sin to me
isn't sin to you, which is truethat in the New Testament says
that he writes his law now onour hearts.
(19:35):
So a measure of that is true,but it doesn't depart us from
the things that the Bibleclearly calls sin.
Does that make sense?
So, whether or not you watch arated R movie, that's between
you and the Lord.
I have personal convictionsaround it.
I'm not going to do it.
Brian doesn't carry the sameconvictions I do when it comes
to that, but he carriesconviction around music that I
don't carry around music.
So does that make sense?
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But then the things that theword clearly states is sin.
We don't get to be moralrelativists and go, okay, well,
just que sera sera, whateverwill be, will be.
Do whatever makes you feelcomfortable.
And so in this, the Christianmoral code they believe is
obsolete and sin begins to beredefined.
Anatomianism was the biggestproblem after the Reformation,
(20:21):
and I think we're still seeingthat.
And basically with theReformation, with Martin Luther,
we saw that the church stoppedhaving accountability and so the
church started redefining whatsin was.
And so I think that's one ofthe biggest losses we had in our
departure from the Catholicchurch is there was no more like
set what's in and what's outanymore.
Every church was allowed to bea governance unto themselves and
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they began to say what isacceptable and what is
unacceptable.
And we still see the follow-upof that even today, as church
organizations choose to takeportions out of God's word that
he says is sin and now say thatit's acceptable to them.
So that's moral relativism.
Are we following this?
The next is moral relativism.
Are we following this?
The next is syncretism, andthis is permits them to embrace
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the traditions and beliefs ofother worldviews and religious
systems as equal to their own,which makes them universalist
and, even worse, to combine them.
Um, whenever I'm going to go alittle bit over, is that okay?
Um, whenever I taught at mykids' Christian school um, they
both were, and I was tasked withteaching the Bible, but I
wasn't allowed to preach.
(21:27):
I could preach the teachings ofJesus, but I could not talk
about the death, burial,resurrection.
They're a Christian schoolBecause they're like we don't
want to offend anybody.
And I was like you weren'tallowed to do any Pauline
epistles because that's going toconfront that for sure.
And I was like, okay, just tobe clear, you say you're a
(21:49):
Christian school, you shouldjust say you're a universalist
school, because they want allreligions to feel comfortable
there.
So the the principal got ontome because on, uh, on Good
Friday I taught, like, leadingup to Good Friday, I taught on
the resurrection, the burial ofthe cross and about how Jesus
atoned for our sins.
And she's like, yeah, but theMormon can't feel comfortable if
(22:13):
they're here.
Again, I'm just going to pushback on this.
Our goal is not for somebodywith a different belief than us
to feel comfortable in ourservice.
Our beliefs are our beliefs.
Does this make sense?
And a syncretist says how canwe blend all these different
views?
Examples to this would bethere's now more and more
Christian witches, christiansthat utilize crystals, christian
(22:38):
Buddhists.
There's even ChristianSatanists, christian buddhists.
There's even christiansatanists, and and this, this is
again and all of them operatewithout knowing.
It's here's the thing is, whenyou know church history, there
is no new thing.
This is gnosticism, and all ofthem are christian gnostics and
they say I have a secret view ofgod that you don't have.
(23:01):
Just believe me, because Godshowed me this.
I'm experiencing a measure ofGod, so just believe me.
No Gnostic, we're not going todo that, okay.
The next one is false Christ,false Christ.
We see this in Mormons, aJehovah's Witness, christian
scientists, baha'i Freemasonry,unitarian, synchronous, and so
(23:23):
all of these.
They acknowledge Christ, butthey don't acknowledge him as
the son of God.
They don't acknowledge him asthe death, burial, resurrection,
that he's seated at the righthand of the father and that
he'll come again.
Matthew 24, 11 says and thenmany false prophets will rise up
and deceive many.
Second Peter 2, 1,.
(23:44):
It says there was also falseprophets among the people, even
as there will be false teachersamong you who will secretly
bring in destructive heresies,even denying the Lord who bought
them, and bring on themselvesswift destruction.
So Mormons believe that Jesusand Satan are spirit brothers,
god and father, who is man, whoobtained Godhood, and we all
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will reign in our afterlife.
We get a planet where we get tolike reign over our own planet
If we do really good.
Jehovah's witness.
You have to work your way toheaven because Christ's work
wasn't enough.
There's 144,000 that will getinto heaven.
Everybody else you're out.
Well, I'll just say, if we'reall in the leading for 144,000,
I'm definitely I'm not making it, I'll just.
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I might as well not do anothergood thing on this earth,
because I'm definitely condemnedto hell.
Baha'i believes that Jesus isone of the nine great teachers
that came to earth, and so theyalso extrapolate teachings from
the other eight.
Jesus is just one of the ninethat they learned from.
And then syncretist says Jesusis a way to the father, but not
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the way to the father.
Okay, so we have I want you tothink about this that there's
open hand and close hand topics,and so close hand is close
handed.
Basically is anything that yousee within the apostlesles Creed
and Nicene Creed, and so theseare close handed.
We're not going to negotiatethese.
They're not up for debate,we're not.
I'm not here to debate with you, to talk to you about it.
(25:12):
It's just it's a close handedtopic.
But if you don't know theApostles Creed, how can you
defend it?
You love me.
So close handed, the identityof Christ, the authority of
scripture.
We believe we have a closedcanon.
We're not still writing ittoday.
Pastor Jimmy doesn't get tohave a vision tomorrow as a
Gnostic and say I have a specialview of God.
(25:33):
Here's this new letter rightAnything within the Nicene Creed
and the Apostles' Creed and theTrinity.
Those are all close-handed,open-handed women pastors.
I'm not here to debate you andyou're not a heretic.
Like, honestly, it's fine, it'san open-handed topic.
A literal six-day creation.
And which day is the Sabbath?
I'm not here to debate you.
(25:53):
Those are open-handed.
There was not a single councilto talk about those things.
Speaking in tongues.
Gift of the spirit I'm not.
They're open-handed, I'm fine.
We can still be a believer andnot believe in the gifts of the
spirit.
I don't think that you'll liveas good of a life Like you're
not going to have full access toeverything that God has.
But I'm not here to debate you.
Like, it's fine, you believedifferent.
(26:15):
I believe different, but we canall still exist in the body of
Christ.
The governmental churchstructure I'm not here to debate
that.
Like, it's an open-handed topic.
A style of worship Well, I don'tbelieve in instruments, that's
fine.
Like, I'm not here.
But the things that I holdclose.
I'm very like tight on thosethings, the identity of Christ
and all of those things.
Are we good?
(26:35):
I think I'm so close to beingdone.
Can you give me just a littlebit longer?
We okay?
Okay, so a heretic is any person.
When you call somebody aheretic, you're literally saying
that they're going to go tohell, that they're apostate.
Now here's the thing is thatyou can preach heresy but not be
a heretic.
And some of my old teachings Ijust didn't know any better it
(26:56):
was heresy, like legit.
Straight up I was like that'sheresy, that was heretical, but
it doesn't mean that I was aheretic.
And a heretic is when youbecome loyal to these
close-handed things, that nowthey're the negotiable.
Does this make sense?
And so now I'm negotiating theidentity of Christ, I'm
negotiating things about theTrinity, and so if you believe
(27:18):
wrong things about God, it willrob your life, steal from your
faith and deplete your soul ofthe beauty and goodness that God
has available to us.
And so how do we overcome theheresy of our day?
Number one reject modernity andembrace tradition.
Reject modernity and embracetradition.
Church history did not beginwith Martin Luther.
(27:39):
It was going on 1400 yearsbefore that.
So look at church history.
What is what does churchhistory tell us about certain
things when we're in this timewhere culture's trying to pull
us from certain things Becausewe don't come up with new
heresies, they're just rebrandedold heresies.
Cs Lewis says this a man who haslived in many places is not
(27:59):
likely to be deceived by thelocal errors of his native
village.
The scholar has lived in manytimes and is therefore in some
degree immune from the greatcataract of nonsense that pours
from the press and themicrophone of his own age.
That's freaking fire rightthere.
Gk Chesterton says this that adisadvantage of men not knowing
(28:23):
the past is that they do notknow the present.
History is a hill or a highpoint of vantage from which
alone men see the town in whichthey live or the age in which
they are living in.
So we're not the firstgeneration to be assailed by
heresy.
However, we are tasked with theresponsibility to guard the
creeds and the faith that hasbeen passed down to us.
(28:43):
I love verse five.
He says let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ.
There has to be an alignment ofour minds of what is true about
Christ, what is true about hisdivinity, what is true about his
death, burial, resurrection andhow our orthopraxy flows out
from that?
Hebrews 13, nine says do not becarried about with various and
(29:05):
strange doctrines If it soundsweird and too hard to understand
and it sounds like, wow, that'sso fresh.
Everybody's like I want a freshperspective.
How many times do I tell y'allat the college the goal is not
to find a unicorn translation ofthe Bible that nobody's ever
heard it before.
That's not the goal.
That's not the goal of yourpreaching, that's not the goal
of your teaching.
I want to stay on the paththat's been forged for me for
(29:27):
2000 years.
Ephesians 4.14 says that weshould no longer be children
tossed to and fro and carriedabout with every wind of
doctrine by the trickery of menand the cunning, craftiness and
deceitful plotting.
So we need to know that what webelieve, and know the faith
that has been passed down to us.
If I know history, then I canknow the origins of the heresies
(29:49):
that are being repackaged.
History keeps you fromrepeating past mistakes, so
learning church history is soimportant.
Number two submit to leaders.
Wayne Grudem says this.
False doctrines are adopted bytheologians first, pastors
second and finally the people ina congregation.
So true, so true, like I hearthings sometimes I'm like it
(30:14):
preaches good.
Just because it preaches gooddoesn't mean it's right, and
just because it's going viraldoesn't mean it's accurate.
So listen to and learn frompeople who have a high honor for
church history.
If they read I tell the collegeall the time read dead people,
read dead people.
Read church fathers readAquinas.
(30:36):
Read some of the early fathers.
Read Augustine, read some ofthese guys that I'm not looking
for what's trending in the top10 right now in Christian
literature.
I'm looking.
Does what the early church sayalign with what's trending with
the top 10 in Christian culture?
Number three remain in themystery.
God is better than weunderstand and all the heresies
(31:00):
began to happen.
When we try to demystify Christand we try to explain injustice
, when we try to explain ourhumanity, when we try to explain
our sin nature and we try toexcuse it, and when we start to
get into those things, we'regoing to step into heretical
grounds every time, and so forus, I have to be okay that I
(31:20):
live in this tension.
I live in the tension thatChrist told a woman to go into a
town and preach the gospel andthe whole city got saved.
But that also Paul wrote thatwomen should be silent in church
.
It's a tension and I'm not hereto explain it because it's a
mystery.
Does this make sense?
There's going to be like thesetensions that we hold in our
(31:44):
faith, and so I have to be okaywith remaining in the mystery.
The Trinity is a mystery.
That's why the whole NiceneCreed was written.
It's because their mindscouldn't get around.
There was all these heresieshappening.
So they wrote the Nicene Creedto confront all these people
that were struggling withChrist's humanity and the
divinity.
And so, number four pursueChrist with fear, with love and
(32:06):
fear.
I don't know all the answers,but I love him with all my heart
, and so Paul's letting themknow out of all of this text,
like it's loving him, fearinghim, that he ascended up, he
came down on the earth, he wentto the lowest possible with the
unbearable punishment of thecross.
(32:26):
He went.
He's going to be Lord in hell.
They're going to bow down.
There's going to be Lord ofearth and Lord over the earth.
He's Lord of it all.
And so I'm going to pursueChrist with love and fear.
So, lord, we just thank you somuch for this time together,
lord.
We just thank you, lord, forthis passage.
God, I thank you that you'veentrusted to us, lord, a faith
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that's been passed down throughthe generations.
May we carry it well that, lord.
We're just one runner in thelong lineage of this, the church
.
And so, father, I thank youthat, as the baton's been passed
to us, the church.
And so, father, I thank youthat, as the baton's been passed
to us, lord, let us run withfear and let us run with love.
Lord, let us look ahead to theones that have paid the price
(33:10):
before us, and may we walk intheir steps.
Lord, any area where we'retrying to pave a new trail, we
just say we're sorry and, lord,we get on the path, lord, that's
been paved for us by Paul andby John, lord, by Peter and
Father, we run that path well.
And so, lord, we thank you forall that you're doing in our
hearts and our lives.
May we love you more in Jesusname.
And somebody who believed itsaid amen.
(33:31):
Love you.
Guys on my podcast, do me afavor and hit the subscribe
button if you haven't done soalready, so you never miss out
on anything here on my podcastAlso one of the best ways for us
to begin to reach other peopleis by you sharing.
So if you do me a favor andshare this podcast with a friend
(33:54):
, family member or maybe on yoursocial media.
Help us get the word out so wecan help others.
Welcome to another part of my Philippians study
that I have been doing with ourstaff at Staff Chapel.
If you haven't listened to theother parts, you might want to
go back deeper into my podcast,check out those episodes and
catch yourself up to join wherewe're at today.
All right, let's jump intoPhilippians.
(00:29):
We're going to continue ourstudy.
Today.
We're going to be inPhilippians, chapter 2.
Philippians, chapter 2.
We're going to read 5 through11.
5 through 11.
Philippians 2.
5 through 11.
And just a quick for us toremember.
To sum up, the whole Bible, theOld Testament, or really the
whole Bible.
(00:49):
We've got God's law, which isthe first five books of the
Bible.
Then we've got God's people.
Next is God's wisdom.
Then we have God's prophetscalling back his people, god's
son, which is the four gospels.
God's church, which is whatwe're studying right now.
And revelation is God's comingback, and so, um, for us to know
, that's the whole summary ofthe Bible.
So when we look at the wholestory of scripture, um, that
(01:12):
kind of helps us look at wherewe're at in the story.
So right now we've beenstudying God's church and we're
in Philippians, chapter two,verses five through 11.
And it says let this mind be inyou, which was also in Christ
Jesus who, being in the form ofGod, did not consider it robbery
to be equal with God, but madehimself of no reputation.
(01:36):
Taking the form of a bondservant and coming in the
likeness of men and being foundin appearance as a man, he
humbled himself and becameobedient to the point of death,
even death of the cross.
Therefore, god also has highlyexalted him and given him the
name which is above every name.
Now, at the name of Jesus,every knee should bow, and of
(01:59):
those in heaven and those onearth and those under the earth,
everybody's going to proclaimthat he's Lord at the end of all
this, and that every tongueshould confess that Jesus Christ
is Lord to the glory of God,the father.
Okay, so, um with this, uh,just for you to know, like this
passage of scripture is actuallyquoted more than any other
(02:21):
passage.
Um with the early church fathers, and so, whenever they put
together the canon, sometimespeople question like how
accurate is the canon?
Well, just so you know, likethe New Testament and many
pieces of scripture, what we didwhen they were putting together
the Bible to check theauthenticity of it is they
looked at early church patristicfathers and their writings,
(02:42):
because they would write out thetext in their what would be
called their targums, becausethey would write out the text in
their what would be calledtheir targums, and so they would
write out the text that theywere going to preach off of, and
then they put all thosetogether, which helps form our
canon, to give us assurance thatwhat we're reading today was
actually what Paul wrote.
And the patristic fathers usethis set of scripture so much,
and the reason why is becauseit's all about Jesus and they
(03:06):
are in this time period, theyare wanting to confront heresies
and different things that we'regoing to look at.
But I would just say to you,like, when you go to this
portion of scripture, this wouldbe like the crowning moment of
Philippians, like this is a bigdeal, like everything Paul's
saying.
It kind of revolves around thisof who Christ is.
So I want you to notice themovement of the text.
(03:26):
In 5 through 7, it explains themystery of the incarnation and
he is the highest.
So the movement of the text isupward.
The incarnation, it's upwardmovement of the text.
But verse 8, we see it movinglower.
And he began, he being found inappearance of a man.
So incarnation, talking aboutall of who he is, his divinity
(04:11):
is high, then now he's beingformed, it goes lower, then 8
spot high, so high and there'snot a spot so low that Christ is
not divine and superior overall.
So the movement of the text,basically Paul's letting us know
we're going upward, we'recoming down, we're going to
every single place and everysingle one of those places he is
(04:32):
divine, he is holy, he is theson of God and just exalting it
in our minds Sometimes it's kindof like the taunt of the people
in the Old Testament.
They said God is the God of themountains, but is he the God of
the valleys?
Meaning there's high placesthat our God can be God, but is
he in the low places?
And Paul's basically sayingthere's not a single place you
can go, as David would writethat you could escape his
(04:53):
presence, that he is allpowerful, he is all divine.
So Jesus is Lord.
He's letting us know Jesus isLord, elohim.
There's two words for this Lord, there's Elohim.
There's two words for this Lordthere's Elohim and there's
Jehovah.
Elohim would be the word forall powerful, all resource, all
wisdom, but Lord is Jehovah andthis is lordship, and lordship
(05:17):
expresses the unity of allpeople saying that he is Lord.
Lordship is me declaring I willobey the path and the way of
Jesus.
So whenever is I think in ourculture, our society, we're okay
with calling him Elohim.
We have a hard time calling himJehovah.
And even in I've been inEcclesiastes vanity, vanity,
(05:41):
everything's vanity.
I studied it yesterday forhours.
I'm like deep in it.
But the interesting thing aboutKohelet in Ecclesiastes is he
only calls God Elohim and heopens up Ecclesiastes that I,
solomon, having all wisdom,having all resources, having all
(06:09):
wisdom, having all resources,having all power, did these
things.
And then in Ecclesiastes,chapter two, he basically goes
through the creation story asthough he's God.
So he's saying I am my ownElohim and he only refers to God
as Elohim all powerful, allwisdom, all resource.
But the key in our Christianwalk is not just acknowledging
(06:31):
him as Elohim, but it's taking astep further that he is Jehovah
, that he's Lord.
So meaning that Lordship is medeclaring I will obey the path
and the way of Jesus.
Perhaps the reason why thewriter Kohelet of Ecclesiastes
deconstructed so hard is he wasokay with him being Elohim but
(06:55):
never stepped into Jehovah.
And Jehovah means that I have arelationship with him which
even in Ecclesiastes, never onetime does he talk to God.
He talks about God, which is awhole nother thing.
Demons always talked about God.
Look in scripture.
They never talked to him.
And there's a difference.
When we sing songs about Godbut not to him, we're all.
(07:19):
Do you feel what I'm sayinghere?
But here he's letting us knowthat he is Jehovah, he is Lord,
he is not just all powerful,he's not just Elohim, he is my
Lord and I'm going to obey theway and the path of Jesus.
So this was a common scripture.
Again, it was quoted by manyearly church fathers.
Chris Austin says this.
(07:40):
He says this of this passage ofscripture.
He says how can the wretchedsay that Christ's existence
began from Mary?
This implies that before thishe did not exist, but Paul says,
being the form of God, he tookon the form of a slave.
A lot of people had a hard timein the early church believing
(08:03):
that Christ existed before Mary,that this began the exaltation
of Mary, that as though she wasthe creator of Christ.
And he's like no, before therewas Mary, there was Christ, like
he existed before.
And the next church father thatwe have is Tertullian and he
says suppose the terms figure,image of fashion, likeness and
(08:23):
form referred merely to aphantom, there would then have
been no substance to Christ'shumanity.
But in this case, figure,likeness and form all point to
the reality of his humanity.
He is truly God as son of thefather, in his figure and image.
He is truly man as the son ofman.
(08:44):
We look at the person of Christand that's what Paul's setting
down.
I know that sometimes we'relike, yeah, I've heard that, I
know it.
But sometimes our lives, right,like what we're living, our
(09:05):
orthopraxy doesn't line up withour orthodoxy.
And the more my orthodoxy, mythoughts about Christ align with
who he is, my orthopraxy, theliving, the outliving of it, my
practice, will begin to align.
So he's saying hey, guys, likewhatever you're questioning
about who God is, look in theperson of Jesus, like he is the
exact representation.
(09:26):
And then we have Epiphanius ofSalamis and it says the word
tasted death once on our behalf.
I love this.
The death of the cross.
He went to his death so that bydeath he might be, he might put
to death, to death the wordbecoming human flesh did not
(09:46):
suffer in his divinity butsuffered with humanity.
I love that he was.
This early church father wasalive in 400 AD when he wrote
this, and so why did so manychurch fathers, why were they so
emphatic about preaching andteaching off of this text?
You think about how manyletters Paul wrote.
(10:08):
Why was this the common place?
Well, the reason why is becauseorthodoxy my orthodoxy needs to
be rooted in right beliefs, and, without knowing it, the
biggest threat that happenedwhenever you read through church
history and still today,because we're a part of that
history the biggest threat tothe church wasn't what was
(10:28):
happening outside the church, itwas the orthodoxy that was
slipping within the church, andif we aren't guarding ourselves
from wrong doctrines, thenbefore we know it, we're
drifting from what Christ set todo.
And so they weren't worriedabout persecution of the church.
They weren't worried aboutgovernment.
(10:49):
They weren't worried aboutthose things.
They were worried about theheresies that were slipping in
amongst the people, and so theearly church fathers were
concerned with orthodoxy.
I think we have a famine of thiswithin the church today.
There's so little understandingof scripture and articulation
around scripture, and I thinkfor all of us, I think it's so
(11:09):
important for us to come back tothis and defend the faith that
we've been entrusted to carry.
We're not carrying a new faith,we're carrying a message that's
2,000 years old, like, and ourjob is to guard it.
But how can we guard it if wedon't even know if what we're
believing is true?
We're believing whatever'strending on Instagram or on X or
(11:30):
on Facebook, or we're just beenpassed down to us, and so
heresy confronting the earlychurch was these four things
Docetism this is Jesus' body wasa mirage.
He was only a spiritual beingFor docetists it was so taboo.
When you see pictures of, whenyou see paintings of the Christ
(11:53):
child, take note of the date,because for hundreds of years it
was taboo to paint Jesus as ababy.
And even whenever you go to anart museum, you'll notice that
the baby even the earlypaintings of the Christ child he
has a man head.
It looks like he's like aminiature man.
He's a tiny person.
I don't know what you'reallowed to call him anymore, but
(12:15):
you know he's that he's a tinyperson.
I don't know what you'reallowed to call him anymore, but
you know he's, that he'svertically challenged, so he
looks like a man, but he'sobviously a baby because he's
tinier and he's sitting on thelap of Mary, oftentimes because
for them it was so offensive tothink that Christ was a baby and
Docetus basically believed thathe was a spiritual being like
(12:39):
he never took on earthly form.
That was so wild to them.
And so, which is sad, becausein 1 Timothy 2, 5, it says that
he makes mediation between usand God.
And so if he didn't take on theform of man, and it even
confronts that he, he knew allof our sufferings like he knew
it, he took it on, he bore it inhis flesh.
(13:00):
If he was just spiritual, thenthere's no atonement for sin
because there was no sacrifice.
So the docetists, even thoughthey were well-meaning and just
know that, all of these heresiesthat were creeping into the
early church, where they hadpure intentions because they
were trying to take somethingcomplex and make it simple for
somebody to understand, andtoday still that's what's
(13:21):
happening.
It's like we're trying to takethe complexity of Christ and
simplify it down.
And then there is Arianism.
And this was Jesus was the sonof God, but not co-eternal with
God, because he was a createdbeing.
The offspring of this would besimilar, would be Mormonism.
Mormons believe this similaridea because they have a hard
(13:42):
time recognizing that he isdivine, that he is equal with
God, that in their brain theycan't even imagine that they
think, because he was created,he's lesser, that he's like a
watered down version, but webelieve that he's co-equal with
(14:03):
God, that he is, but at the sametime he is submitted to the
father.
It's like this paradox of thetwo going hand in hand, this
balance that we have to keep.
Then there's Nestorianism, andthis is Jesus was a person, but
he was chosen by the Holy Spiritto be the Son of God, which
just makes me eye roll reallyhard.
(14:29):
The Council of Ephesusconfronted this heresy in 431 AD
and this played out today inthe overemphasis of Christ's
humanity.
So we see this same idea ofwhen people overemphasize in
their teachings about Christbeing a man just like us, but we
miss out the part of hisdivinity, that, yes, he was like
us, but he knew not sin.
Like it's like it's the twogoing together.
It's like this is like we makeJesus our best friend kind of
(14:49):
mentality Of like he's just likeme.
It's like that whole campaignthat they did around the Super
Bowl he gets us and yes, butalso no, because even though he
understands me, he's on a levelthat I can never reach, and so
there's a measure of him that isunknown to me because I've
(15:11):
never lived as a divine being.
Does this make sense?
And so this is the overemphasisof Christ's humanity.
And then in this, they forgetthat Christ had difficult days.
This like blew my mind theother day.
I was in a counseling sessionand I was just talking about
trauma with my counselor, mytrauma, and we were just talking
(15:35):
and she goes.
Well, crystal, she said thinkabout Christ whenever he's in
the garden and he's about to goto the cross and he's losing it
on his disciples, he's like canyou not pray with me for one
hour?
And she goes.
His response she goes.
Could we just consider that?
(15:56):
That was like a trauma response.
It was coming out of a place ofpain.
He felt abandoned and all of asudden I go, oh my gosh, he felt
abandoned.
I said this is the trauma fromwhen his mom left him, like as a
young boy.
And all of a sudden I was like,could it be that Christ in the
cross, that that feeling ofabandonment from a child at 13
(16:19):
carried over then at his placeof deepest pain?
And all of a sudden I told herI was like I'm so shook right
now just at the thought thatJesus would have a trauma
response but yet he was stillsinless, but that he knows our
trauma and that we have painthat makes us respond in a way
that we wouldn't normallyrespond.
Are you following me?
And it's that Jesus had harddays just like us and yes, he
(16:43):
did, and it's beautiful to paintthat.
But the fine line that we don'tstep into this heresy is that
he experienced that traumaresponse and he still didn't sin
.
Does this make sense?
I don't make him so like methat I'm like it's okay that I
sin when I have the traumaresponse.
Does this make sense?
But he is divine and he did notsin.
(17:06):
Gnosticism I believe this isstill prevalent in the church
today, and this is you needspecial knowledge that isn't in
the Bible for understanding ofGod.
Gnostics also believe thateverything spiritual is good,
everything material is bad, andso Gnostics they basically
they're like God told mesomething, just believe me,
because they have special insideknowledge that nobody else has,
(17:30):
and so you hear people say thatall the time They'll be like
they have this special unicornversion of interpretation of the
Bible that is, in.
It's incongruent with any ofthe early church fathers or
church tradition.
But they're like just believeme, just believe me, I'm a
Gnostic, but heresies of todayand the ancient heretics.
(17:50):
The difference between a heresytoday and early heresy is
ancient heretics didn't knowthey were being a heretic and
they were just.
They were just doing the bestthey could.
Even Paul confronted Peter tohis face.
Galatians, chapter two wouldsay.
Peter didn't know he was beinga heretic.
He was being confronted becausewhat he was doing is trying to
(18:11):
make the gospel messageapplicable, make the Jews feel
comfortable with the Gentiles,but in doing so he was watering
down what the word was tellingthem to do.
Are we okay?
Am I talking over you or to you?
To you, okay, all right, I'mtrying to keep it.
We're good, okay, so modernheresy combines multiple
(18:32):
heresies.
That's the difference.
The first one that's confrontingus today that we have to guard
ourselves against is moralrelativism.
Moral relativism I think thisis the most prevalent and this
is a sexual truth comes fromwithin and must be accepted and
celebrated.
And I would say it's not justquarantine to sexual sin.
(18:52):
I think it's most sin.
It's not just quarantine tosexual sin, I think it's most
sin.
It's like, well, I don't feelconvicted about that, like it's
fine.
It's literally the lady that Imet with.
She's like, yes, I'mfornicating, yes, I'm like doing
things outside of marriage thatI should be doing, but God
(19:14):
wants me happy.
That's moral relativism.
And in culture today it's justthey say morality is subjective
to cultures and individualopinions that what's sin to me
isn't sin to you, which is truethat in the New Testament says
that he writes his law now onour hearts.
(19:35):
So a measure of that is true,but it doesn't depart us from
the things that the Bibleclearly calls sin.
Does that make sense?
So, whether or not you watch arated R movie, that's between
you and the Lord.
I have personal convictionsaround it.
I'm not going to do it.
Brian doesn't carry the sameconvictions I do when it comes
to that, but he carriesconviction around music that I
don't carry around music.
So does that make sense?
(19:57):
But then the things that theword clearly states is sin.
We don't get to be moralrelativists and go, okay, well,
just que sera sera, whateverwill be, will be.
Do whatever makes you feelcomfortable.
And so in this, the Christianmoral code they believe is
obsolete and sin begins to beredefined.
Anatomianism was the biggestproblem after the Reformation,
(20:21):
and I think we're still seeingthat.
And basically with theReformation, with Martin Luther,
we saw that the church stoppedhaving accountability and so the
church started redefining whatsin was.
And so I think that's one ofthe biggest losses we had in our
departure from the Catholicchurch is there was no more like
set what's in and what's outanymore.
Every church was allowed to bea governance unto themselves and
(20:45):
they began to say what isacceptable and what is
unacceptable.
And we still see the follow-upof that even today, as church
organizations choose to takeportions out of God's word that
he says is sin and now say thatit's acceptable to them.
So that's moral relativism.
Are we following this?
The next is moral relativism.
Are we following this?
The next is syncretism, andthis is permits them to embrace
(21:06):
the traditions and beliefs ofother worldviews and religious
systems as equal to their own,which makes them universalist
and, even worse, to combine them.
Um, whenever I'm going to go alittle bit over, is that okay?
Um, whenever I taught at mykids' Christian school um, they
both were, and I was tasked withteaching the Bible, but I
wasn't allowed to preach.
(21:27):
I could preach the teachings ofJesus, but I could not talk
about the death, burial,resurrection.
They're a Christian schoolBecause they're like we don't
want to offend anybody.
And I was like you weren'tallowed to do any Pauline
epistles because that's going toconfront that for sure.
And I was like, okay, just tobe clear, you say you're a
(21:49):
Christian school, you shouldjust say you're a universalist
school, because they want allreligions to feel comfortable
there.
So the the principal got ontome because on, uh, on Good
Friday I taught, like, leadingup to Good Friday, I taught on
the resurrection, the burial ofthe cross and about how Jesus
atoned for our sins.
And she's like, yeah, but theMormon can't feel comfortable if
(22:13):
they're here.
Again, I'm just going to pushback on this.
Our goal is not for somebodywith a different belief than us
to feel comfortable in ourservice.
Our beliefs are our beliefs.
Does this make sense?
And a syncretist says how canwe blend all these different
views?
Examples to this would bethere's now more and more
Christian witches, christiansthat utilize crystals, christian
(22:38):
Buddhists.
There's even ChristianSatanists, christian buddhists.
There's even christiansatanists, and and this, this is
again and all of them operatewithout knowing.
It's here's the thing is, whenyou know church history, there
is no new thing.
This is gnosticism, and all ofthem are christian gnostics and
they say I have a secret view ofgod that you don't have.
(23:01):
Just believe me, because Godshowed me this.
I'm experiencing a measure ofGod, so just believe me.
No Gnostic, we're not going todo that, okay.
The next one is false Christ,false Christ.
We see this in Mormons, aJehovah's Witness, christian
scientists, baha'i Freemasonry,unitarian, synchronous, and so
(23:23):
all of these.
They acknowledge Christ, butthey don't acknowledge him as
the son of God.
They don't acknowledge him asthe death, burial, resurrection,
that he's seated at the righthand of the father and that
he'll come again.
Matthew 24, 11 says and thenmany false prophets will rise up
and deceive many.
Second Peter 2, 1,.
(23:44):
It says there was also falseprophets among the people, even
as there will be false teachersamong you who will secretly
bring in destructive heresies,even denying the Lord who bought
them, and bring on themselvesswift destruction.
So Mormons believe that Jesusand Satan are spirit brothers,
god and father, who is man, whoobtained Godhood, and we all
(24:07):
will reign in our afterlife.
We get a planet where we get tolike reign over our own planet
If we do really good.
Jehovah's witness.
You have to work your way toheaven because Christ's work
wasn't enough.
There's 144,000 that will getinto heaven.
Everybody else you're out.
Well, I'll just say, if we'reall in the leading for 144,000,
I'm definitely I'm not making it, I'll just.
(24:28):
I might as well not do anothergood thing on this earth,
because I'm definitely condemnedto hell.
Baha'i believes that Jesus isone of the nine great teachers
that came to earth, and so theyalso extrapolate teachings from
the other eight.
Jesus is just one of the ninethat they learned from.
And then syncretist says Jesusis a way to the father, but not
(24:50):
the way to the father.
Okay, so we have I want you tothink about this that there's
open hand and close hand topics,and so close hand is close
handed.
Basically is anything that yousee within the apostlesles Creed
and Nicene Creed, and so theseare close handed.
We're not going to negotiatethese.
They're not up for debate,we're not.
I'm not here to debate with you, to talk to you about it.
(25:12):
It's just it's a close handedtopic.
But if you don't know theApostles Creed, how can you
defend it?
You love me.
So close handed, the identityof Christ, the authority of
scripture.
We believe we have a closedcanon.
We're not still writing ittoday.
Pastor Jimmy doesn't get tohave a vision tomorrow as a
Gnostic and say I have a specialview of God.
(25:33):
Here's this new letter rightAnything within the Nicene Creed
and the Apostles' Creed and theTrinity.
Those are all close-handed,open-handed women pastors.
I'm not here to debate you andyou're not a heretic.
Like, honestly, it's fine, it'san open-handed topic.
A literal six-day creation.
And which day is the Sabbath?
I'm not here to debate you.
(25:53):
Those are open-handed.
There was not a single councilto talk about those things.
Speaking in tongues.
Gift of the spirit I'm not.
They're open-handed, I'm fine.
We can still be a believer andnot believe in the gifts of the
spirit.
I don't think that you'll liveas good of a life Like you're
not going to have full access toeverything that God has.
But I'm not here to debate you.
Like, it's fine, you believedifferent.
(26:15):
I believe different, but we canall still exist in the body of
Christ.
The governmental churchstructure I'm not here to debate
that.
Like, it's an open-handed topic.
A style of worship Well, I don'tbelieve in instruments, that's
fine.
Like, I'm not here.
But the things that I holdclose.
I'm very like tight on thosethings, the identity of Christ
and all of those things.
Are we good?
(26:35):
I think I'm so close to beingdone.
Can you give me just a littlebit longer?
We okay?
Okay, so a heretic is any person.
When you call somebody aheretic, you're literally saying
that they're going to go tohell, that they're apostate.
Now here's the thing is thatyou can preach heresy but not be
a heretic.
And some of my old teachings Ijust didn't know any better it
(26:56):
was heresy, like legit.
Straight up I was like that'sheresy, that was heretical, but
it doesn't mean that I was aheretic.
And a heretic is when youbecome loyal to these
close-handed things, that nowthey're the negotiable.
Does this make sense?
And so now I'm negotiating theidentity of Christ, I'm
negotiating things about theTrinity, and so if you believe
(27:18):
wrong things about God, it willrob your life, steal from your
faith and deplete your soul ofthe beauty and goodness that God
has available to us.
And so how do we overcome theheresy of our day?
Number one reject modernity andembrace tradition.
Reject modernity and embracetradition.
Church history did not beginwith Martin Luther.
(27:39):
It was going on 1400 yearsbefore that.
So look at church history.
What is what does churchhistory tell us about certain
things when we're in this timewhere culture's trying to pull
us from certain things Becausewe don't come up with new
heresies, they're just rebrandedold heresies.
Cs Lewis says this a man who haslived in many places is not
(27:59):
likely to be deceived by thelocal errors of his native
village.
The scholar has lived in manytimes and is therefore in some
degree immune from the greatcataract of nonsense that pours
from the press and themicrophone of his own age.
That's freaking fire rightthere.
Gk Chesterton says this that adisadvantage of men not knowing
(28:23):
the past is that they do notknow the present.
History is a hill or a highpoint of vantage from which
alone men see the town in whichthey live or the age in which
they are living in.
So we're not the firstgeneration to be assailed by
heresy.
However, we are tasked with theresponsibility to guard the
creeds and the faith that hasbeen passed down to us.
(28:43):
I love verse five.
He says let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ.
There has to be an alignment ofour minds of what is true about
Christ, what is true about hisdivinity, what is true about his
death, burial, resurrection andhow our orthopraxy flows out
from that?
Hebrews 13, nine says do not becarried about with various and
(29:05):
strange doctrines If it soundsweird and too hard to understand
and it sounds like, wow, that'sso fresh.
Everybody's like I want a freshperspective.
How many times do I tell y'allat the college the goal is not
to find a unicorn translation ofthe Bible that nobody's ever
heard it before.
That's not the goal.
That's not the goal of yourpreaching, that's not the goal
of your teaching.
I want to stay on the paththat's been forged for me for
(29:27):
2000 years.
Ephesians 4.14 says that weshould no longer be children
tossed to and fro and carriedabout with every wind of
doctrine by the trickery of menand the cunning, craftiness and
deceitful plotting.
So we need to know that what webelieve, and know the faith
that has been passed down to us.
If I know history, then I canknow the origins of the heresies
(29:49):
that are being repackaged.
History keeps you fromrepeating past mistakes, so
learning church history is soimportant.
Number two submit to leaders.
Wayne Grudem says this.
False doctrines are adopted bytheologians first, pastors
second and finally the people ina congregation.
So true, so true, like I hearthings sometimes I'm like it
(30:14):
preaches good.
Just because it preaches gooddoesn't mean it's right, and
just because it's going viraldoesn't mean it's accurate.
So listen to and learn frompeople who have a high honor for
church history.
If they read I tell the collegeall the time read dead people,
read dead people.
Read church fathers readAquinas.
(30:36):
Read some of the early fathers.
Read Augustine, read some ofthese guys that I'm not looking
for what's trending in the top10 right now in Christian
literature.
I'm looking.
Does what the early church sayalign with what's trending with
the top 10 in Christian culture?
Number three remain in themystery.
God is better than weunderstand and all the heresies
(31:00):
began to happen.
When we try to demystify Christand we try to explain injustice
, when we try to explain ourhumanity, when we try to explain
our sin nature and we try toexcuse it, and when we start to
get into those things, we'regoing to step into heretical
grounds every time, and so forus, I have to be okay that I
(31:20):
live in this tension.
I live in the tension thatChrist told a woman to go into a
town and preach the gospel andthe whole city got saved.
But that also Paul wrote thatwomen should be silent in church
.
It's a tension and I'm not hereto explain it because it's a
mystery.
Does this make sense?
There's going to be like thesetensions that we hold in our
(31:44):
faith, and so I have to be okaywith remaining in the mystery.
The Trinity is a mystery.
That's why the whole NiceneCreed was written.
It's because their mindscouldn't get around.
There was all these heresieshappening.
So they wrote the Nicene Creedto confront all these people
that were struggling withChrist's humanity and the
divinity.
And so, number four pursueChrist with fear, with love and
(32:06):
fear.
I don't know all the answers,but I love him with all my heart
, and so Paul's letting themknow out of all of this text,
like it's loving him, fearinghim, that he ascended up, he
came down on the earth, he wentto the lowest possible with the
unbearable punishment of thecross.
(32:26):
He went.
He's going to be Lord in hell.
They're going to bow down.
There's going to be Lord ofearth and Lord over the earth.
He's Lord of it all.
And so I'm going to pursueChrist with love and fear.
So, lord, we just thank you somuch for this time together,
lord.
We just thank you, lord, forthis passage.
God, I thank you that you'veentrusted to us, lord, a faith
(32:48):
that's been passed down throughthe generations.
May we carry it well that, lord.
We're just one runner in thelong lineage of this, the church
.
And so, father, I thank youthat, as the baton's been passed
to us, the church.
And so, father, I thank youthat, as the baton's been passed
to us, lord, let us run withfear and let us run with love.
Lord, let us look ahead to theones that have paid the price
(33:10):
before us, and may we walk intheir steps.
Lord, any area where we'retrying to pave a new trail, we
just say we're sorry and, lord,we get on the path, lord, that's
been paved for us by Paul andby John, lord, by Peter and
Father, we run that path well.
And so, lord, we thank you forall that you're doing in our
hearts and our lives.
May we love you more in Jesusname.
And somebody who believed itsaid amen.
(33:31):
Love you.
Guys on my podcast, do me afavor and hit the subscribe
button if you haven't done soalready, so you never miss out
on anything here on my podcastAlso one of the best ways for us
to begin to reach other peopleis by you sharing.
So if you do me a favor andshare this podcast with a friend
(33:54):
, family member or maybe on yoursocial media.
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