Allen Jackson - Protection From Deception - Part 1
It's always a privilege to be together. Our topic today is Protection from Deception. It was Jesus most consistent warning when he talked to his disciples and friends about the end of the age. If Jesus warned us against deception, I think he understood it was going to be a very real threat to us. We wanna unpack that a little bit from the Word of God and understand how we can stand in God's truth prepared for whatever the future holds and we don't have to be afraid. Enjoy the lesson.
I wanna begin a series, at least for a few sessions, talking a little bit about "Protection From Deception". And it's really a response to something Jesus told us that we should anticipate as we approach the end of the age. And I'm not putting a countdown clock on that. I don't, in fact, I don't really find it helpful to lead your life every day with the imagination that Jesus is coming this afternoon. He could, I think it's much more helpful to get up every day and lead your life as if you could spend your life being pleasing to the Lord today. One almost creates an escapist theology.
I wanna be ready when he comes, but I wanna be caught being very busy about his business. And if you have the imagination that he's coming this afternoon, you won't make very good plans for tomorrow. That's another series. Protection from deception, Jesus gives us some very clear warnings and I have the opinion that if Jesus issues a warning, just maybe we should pay attention. So, we'll step into Matthew chapter 23 and Jesus is speaking over the city of Jerusalem. "Jerusalem, you who killed the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing. Look, your house is left to you desolate. For I tell you, you'll not see me again until you say, 'Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.'"
It's a very dire prediction Jesus is making over the city. He calls them desolate. It's still a thriving, bustling place, a flourishing city. And Jesus understands it to be desolate. "And he left the temple and he was walking away when his disciples came up to him to call his attention to its buildings". The disciples are a little bit offended or at least they're uneasy with the tone of what he's saying. It's not desolate. Herod's Temple was one of the wonders of the ancient world. It was the pride of the nation. People came from around the Roman Empire to see it. And so, the disciples trying to change the tone a bit called Jesus attention to the buildings.
And in verse 2, Jesus said, "Do you see all these things? I tell you the truth", you know by now when you see that phrase, right? "I tell you the truth, not one stone here will be left on another; everyone will be thrown down". Unbelievable, unbelievable. Jesus didn't always just say happy things. That in fact, the tone of this whole passage is pretty intense. "As Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives", if you leave the Temple Mount and you're going east, you cross the Kidron Valley and immediately there is the Mount of Olives. So, the the disciples were there. "And the disciples came to Jesus privately, 'Tell us when will this happen? And what will be the sign of your coming in the end of the age?'"
The disciples leap to the conclusion that if the temple is to be destroyed, it's got to be the end of the age. They can't imagine bringing destruction to that massive spectacular temple unless it's the end of all things. When Jesus answered their question, but he said in verse 4, "Watch out that no one deceives you". And that's really the text for this little study we will do. Matthew 24 is Jesus most lengthy prophetic discourse. He's the greatest of all the Hebrew prophets. He's giving them a description of what is a... in front of them in their lifetime. And then he also describes the world as we approach the end of the age. And in the midst of that rather dire passage, Jesus most consistent, most repeated warning is against deception. Watch out that no one deceives you.
Now, if Jesus is warning us against deception, I think we should all acknowledge that we are vulnerable to being deceived. If you don't believe you can be deceived, I would submit to you humbly, you already are. Same chapter verse 24, Jesus said, "Many false prophets will appear and deceive many people". Same chapter, I'm sorry, verse 11. Now, verse 24, "For false Christs, false messiahs, and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and miracles, deceive even the elect if that were possible". How you define terms has a great deal of bearing on how you understand what Jesus is saying. If you think of a prophet as someone who wore a long Hebrew looking robe and had a scruffy beard and said, thus sayeth the Lord, you might think you're pretty much removed from that.
But biblically speaking, one of the ways to understand a prophet is someone who gives God's perspective, someone who tells the truth to the people. A priest represents the people to God, a prophet represents God to the people. So, the prophets are the people you expect to tell the truth. So, a false prophet is someone you expect to tell you the truth who does not. If you'll tolerate that slightly expanded definition when Jesus is warning us about many false prophets deceiving many people, it doesn't take a great deal of creative imagination to imagine a time when many people you would expect to tell the truth are not telling the truth. And Christ is, we attach it to Jesus because we think of Jesus the Christ. But it's really through several languages. It's Jesus the Messiah, Jesus the Anointed One.
So, he said, there will be many false messiahs, false saviors, people who claim to have solutions. They're gonna resolve the problems of human suffering and they'll say peace when there is no peace. And the outcome of all of this, he said, is many, many will be deceived. Now, I think that's relevant because I don't think it's a real stretch to say we live in a time, in my lifetime at least, of unprecedented manipulation, propaganda, and censorship. Things like the idea of free speech have been completely almost co-opted. And we have all these new labels that are being introduced. You know, we have misinformation. If it's misinformation, you can't say it. That's a very new idea.
Once upon a time, we would say, you know, we would defend your right to say the most heinous things in public. But now in the clamping down on freedom, now you're censored, you're canceled, you're shadow band. The algorithms aren't gonna promote what you do. Misinformation, disinformation, malinformation. They keep creating new words to give them greater license. It's bizarre to me. We've turned good into evil and evil into good. It's confusing, it's disorienting. They put pornography in the libraries of our young children, in the schools, and we object to the books. They say we're banning books. Not at all. We're saying some learning should be age appropriate. That's the reason we don't sell beer in elementary schools.
Well, it's among the many reasons. We don't give out driver's license in day care. Some learning is age appropriate. It has nothing to do with banning books. But what we see is this manipulation of information and along with that technology is providing us unprecedented tools with which we can communicate. From our little church in middle Tennessee, we share the good news of Jesus with the nations of the world on a weekly basis. It was an impossibility in the very, just a few years ago. And the way we're able to do that and the tools we have to communicate with are phenomenal, but they also usher in unprecedented tools for deception and it makes it increasingly difficult to know the truth.
Have you noticed? There's been one institution after another that a few short years ago, we considered to be bedrock solid, trustworthy and stable, and now they seem far less so and tragically that includes in many instances, even the church. So, these same tools that enable us to communicate, make it much, much, much easier to brew deception. And the newest one on the horizon, it seems to me is AI. I don't think, I certainly know I don't understand yet the full potential of that. I think it'll bring far greater change than the Internet has. And while it has amazing potential for positive and good things, it holds a startling potential for deception and manipulation.
Again, not to be frightened. Jesus told us it would happen. So, he gave us a warning. He said, watch out, watch out that no one deceives you. And I think, to think of it just in terms of politics or to think of it in terms of some of those places that are the more easy. I think the deception that is flourishing around us this week, I can give you a couple examples. This week, the United Methodist Church changed formally their policy. Now, their practice has been aligned with this for quite some time, but they formally changed their policy.
One of the largest protestant denominations in our nation, they voted to repeal their ban on the LGBTQ clergy and any prohibitions on its ministers from officiating same sex weddings. That's a significant deviation from orthodoxy under the banner of being inclusive and as an expression of love, they've accepted an expanded definition of marriage. But in so doing, they've set aside the language of scripture and the orthodox practice of the Christian church over many centuries. I think you can put that in the category of deception. So, you can be well educated, highly sophisticated, use big words and still be deceived. I give you a completely different example. I've seen multiple officials in recent days, very well informed people, very well educated, people of great power and significance, look dead into a lens and go, "Our border is secure". It really isn't funny, it's deception.
Somebody in the pile is deceived because if you have anybody that happens to be on the border, there's hundreds of thousands of people spilling across, it's an invasion. And they're coming from the nations of the world. I mean, the list goes on and on and on. We did a conference last week and we had heard two or three presentations on abortion. And one of the things we hear quite frequently is that abortion is protection for those who are pregnant from rape or incest or to protect the life of a mother. That's why abortion exists. And they say it with such intensity and such ferocity and such frequency, you think, well, that has to be true. That reflects less than 2% of the abortions there are. Deception. It is flourishing or it's not something that's coming. We've separated ourselves from the truth. The truth is inconvenient. It's awkward. Has to be grappled with.
So what I wanna do is take two or three sessions and see if we can build a foundation that would enable us to be a bit more stable in a time of deception, that would help protect us a bit. I would say immunize us, but that's kind of gotten a negative connotation, so. And I wanna start in this particular presentation with what I believe to be a very essential component and that's the foundation of God's Word. Unless you drift and I'm not able to keep you with me in the discussion, here's the real essence of what I'm gonna ask you to consider is to believe that it's true. I'm gonna ask you to believe that it's true. If you don't believe it's true, it won't protect you.
If you can dissect it and choose the parts you wanna believe instead of part the ones you don't, it won't protect you. But I think we can see that from scripture. We'll go back to Matthew chapter 7, Jesus is teaching. It's a pretty familiar parable. He said, "Everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and they beat against the house; yet it didn't fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine, it does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. And the rain came down, and the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against the house, and it fell with a great crash".
It's probably worth noting in passing that the beachfront property is more expensive, but unless very carefully constructed, it's much less stable. In all seriousness, both of these builders heard the Word of God. They had the same opportunities, they were presented with an equal position for a good outcome. They both heard the Word of God. The difference in outcome is what they chose to do after they heard the Word of God. The one with the more stable foundation that could withstand the turmoil that life would bring, when they heard the Word of God, they put it into practice. The alternative is hearing it and just making a check. Filling out the seminar attendance sheet but not putting it into practice.
Now, I think this is relevant for those of us who imagine ourselves to be Christian because for a long time, kind of the goal of hanging around church world, and I've spent my life there, has been an educational process. You learn the facts and you expand your knowledge base and we've had very little emphasis unfortunately, on the actual application. I mean, we wanted the application so we could secure our eternity. We focus on that pretty carefully with some painstaking attention, but once we've established that we kind of imagine everything else in the discussion is arbitrary. It's left almost entirely up to personal choice and preference. There's no real pressure. You've secured your deal.
But Jesus seems to be inviting us towards a bit broader understanding. He said, if you hear my words and you put them into practice. He didn't say if you get saved. He didn't say if you experienced the new birth. He said, if you're practicing my Word, you're far more stable. So, what I would like to suggest from that little parable is that how we receive the Word of God matters. This isn't complicated, but in a time of deception, you don't need complex responses. You need a simple straightforward answer that brings stability to you. And what I wanna submit to you is how you and I receive the Word of God is what makes all the difference.
Now, we're gonna look at that in just a little bit more detail. Jesus gave us another parable in Matthew chapter 13. It's the parable of the sower. And he's told the parable and the disciples are a little agitated because the meaning isn't clear to them. And in private, in verse 10, "The disciples come to Jesus and said, 'Why do you speak to the people in parables?'" And Jesus gives them a really, it's not the answer you would expect. He said, "That knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven have been given to you, but not to them". Wow. "Whoever has will be given more, and he will have an abundance. And whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him".
It's worth noting that is not a politically correct answer from Jesus. Come on. If the theme of this exercise is that we're gonna begin to believe the Bible in ways that we have been reluctant to believe the Bible that means several things. We'll have to quit living by one or two proof texts. And if you've grown up around church, we're all guilty of this. The little group of people that we hang with has our three favorite verses to quote. And with that, we will do battle with the body of Christ because our three verses make us better than the people who don't have our three verses. It's too early to get too mad at me. It'll get worse. And the awkwardness about yielding to scripture is it begins to reorient and to bring new ideas and to help us get to know the character of God in a new way.
And Jesus said, everybody doesn't gonna hear the same thing. In fact, he says some things will be taken from some and given to others. But he's revealing a principle of the kingdom of God. It's not about equal distribution of opportunity. It's what you do with the opportunity you're given. And it's not a fruitful thing to stand and be angry at somebody else because you didn't get their opportunity. People who use that language are manipulating you. They're trying to deceive you to reorient your allegiance because they're promising they'll give you something that God didn't. It's rampant amongst us.
The goal is fruitfulness and what we can trust, a principle throughout scripture and we will look at it in some detail if not in this session, is that God is a just judge. Yeah. And if he didn't give me the physical skills to play in the NBA or the NFL, which as a younger person I thought was a significant breach of fairness. It's kind of awkward when God makes you slow. Well, have you ever looked at somebody else and going, "If God had made me like that". But he gave me a southern accent. But he goes on to explain the parable. He said this is, "Listen then to what the parable of the sower means". And this is familiar to many of us, I suspect. He's gonna describe the farmer sowing seed and there's four locations where the seed falls.
And Jesus gives it application in our lives. "When anyone hears the message about the kingdom and doesn't understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what was sown in his heart. This is the seed sown along the path. The one who received the seed that fell on rocky places is the man who hears the word and once receives it with joy. But since he has no root, he lasts only a short time. When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, he quickly falls away. The one who received the seed that fell among the thorns is the man who hears the word, but the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth, choke it, making it unfruitful. But the one who received the seed that fell on good soil is the man who hears the word and understands it. He produces a crop, yielding a hundred, sixty, or thirty times what was sown".
Just some big picture observations. All four of the destinations where the seed fell, where the farmer sowed the seed, Jesus describes as persons who heard the Word of God. So, everybody described in this parable was a recipient of God's Word. Again, the premise that we're trying to understand and in its simplicity, but its import for our lives is how we hear the Word of God matters. How we receive the Word of God matters. Everybody in this parable got presented with the Word of God. Three of the four, 75% were not fruitful. Now, if you've only got a one in four chance of getting to the best outcome, this is no longer casual. And even amongst those who receive the Word of God and are described as good soil, there is a widely divergent outcome. So, it's not so consistent.
Now, there's four possible responses that Jesus describes to the Word of God. The first one which he described as the seed sown along the path is the people who receive it, but they don't understand it. But the result of that, the evidence that they didn't understand it, he said, you can't protect what was received from the evil one. Now, that's an intriguing piece of information that we all need to give some thought to. Satan wants to separate you from the truth of God's Word. He's going to purposefully intentionally try to dislodge its place in your life, in your thought, in your decision. That's a very personal attack. And all of us, if we had time could describe those times where you have questioned the Word of God.
It goes all the way back to the opening chapters of Genesis when Satan shows up in the garden and says, "Did God really say"? Eve said, "Oh no, we we can't eat in this tree". And what did Satan say? "Did God really say"? Now, I find that the temptations vary as much as we vary as individuals, but the Satan comes to us and he questions the authority of God in your life. Do you really believe God created the heaven and the earth? Do you really believe the Bible is an accurate reflection of the character and the nature of God? Do you really believe there's only one way into God's kingdom? Satan challenges. It's different amongst us, but no one escapes those challenges.
Jesus has warned us about it and be prepared. The second destination he describes is the seed that's sown on a rocky place. And he said, when trouble or persecution becomes, please note the cause of the trouble or persecution. It's not because the world is a troubling place. It's not because the evil exists. It's not because of injustice. He said, when trouble or persecution comes because of the Word. That if you decide you're gonna stand on a biblical principle or a kingdom of God idea that challenges will emerge. Gee that seems kind of relevant to the world we're in. Embracing God's Word does not always bring affirmation. And Jesus is telling us it's going to require perseverance to hold on to the Word, to be rooted in enough that we're not just a casual embracer of that.
The challenge we have as believers is not just being present at church or hearing the Word of God, we have to receive it. We have to bring it into our lives and make it a part of our story. To do that we'll need the help of the Holy Spirit. That's my prayer with you today. Let's pray:
Heavenly Father, I thank you that we have the Word of God available to us and churches that are open, but I ask now that by your Spirit, you would give us understanding hearts. May we not just hear the Word, may we understand it so that we can live it out each day. I thank you for that in Jesus's name, amen.