Competing Gospels

Good morning. My name is Tony. For those of you who don’t know me for those of you who don’t know me, my name is also Tony. At the beginning of the month, we try to give you a little bit of an update, some good news. We call them our milestones and they’re just kind of a time to remember cool things that God is doing. And so I want to run you through those things before we get into our text today. We have three new couple of people moving in here and I want to show you who they are over here, this is Jade and Cam. They moved here from Miami. We love them. Super happy they’re here. Vivian and Jassy, I believe, moved in from also from Miami. Happy to have them here. And then on the bottom, this is Chiago and Caroline Silva. They moved to Broward County from Sao Paulo, Brazil. Caroline is going to be helping in the office and with some of our missions administration. And then also Chiago is going to work with our teenagers, so we’re excited about having him. So yay it’s all these wonderful people who moved in.

All right, next. This is kind of fun, but a couple of years ago, we started attending the Orange Blossom Parade, which is what Broward County’s I said Davies little, you know, parade. And and after afterwards, it’s like a festival. But we’ve been entering this parade and festival for years and years and years. And this past year, and this is good news, we won the float parade thing. We had the best float. Now, I don’t know what that says about our float or what that says about other people’s floats, but our float was the best float. BCA just did it and did an amazing job. BCA is our wonderful school that’s been around for so long and so grateful to have that. And then the last little thing is the last two months, we have seen eight brothers and sisters baptized into Christ. And what a great encouragement that is for us. So welcome, all of you guys to the family. Today we’re going to be in John, chapter seven. So if you have a Bible, you can go ahead and turn there or turn on there. We’ll get there in just a few moments. It has been one of the most wonderful experiences of my life, being able to go through the Gospels with you and do the sermon series that we’re calling the Ministry of Jesus.

This series has been personally inspiring. It’s been challenging, it’s been convicting. And I think the reason it has had so much of an impact on me is because the subject matter is Jesus. Every page, virtually every verse we look at, we get to see Christ in all of his glory. And you can’t really have a better subject than Jesus Christ. I’ve run out of adjectives to describe what it’s been like for me to study this, but every week I present to you sort of a 40 minutes lesson or so. And for every 40 minutes of preparation, or rather of a sermon you hear, there are probably another 15 hours or so that I get to spend in these individual passages learning and being so profoundly blessed by them. In fact, I wish that I could share with you everything that I get to read and that I get to absorb and that I get to pray through and study in these great portions of Scriptures that present to us Jesus in all his majesty and glory. Maybe one day I’ll write a book, probably not. But I’m so thankful that I get to teach in this way.

So I just want to say it’s an honor for me to teach this congregation. And I’m so thankful that most of you look like you’re paying attention. You look like you’re with me because I know you feel also profoundly blessed by the ministry of Jesus. So John, chapter seven. We’re going to look at verse 14 in just a few seconds, and we’re going to go 14 through 24, then we’ll walk all the way back through it. But let me just catch you up previously kind of on the ministry of Jesus. Jesus set his sights to Jerusalem. We talked about this two weeks ago, that he’s headed towards his death. He has left Galilee and he’s about to enter Jerusalem where he is on a mission of mercy. This is what it says. This is verse 14. Not until halfway through the festival did Jesus go up to the temple courts and begin to teach. The jews there were amazed and asked, how did this man get such learning without having been taught? Jesus answered, my teaching is not my own. It comes from the one who sent me. Anyone who chooses to do the will of God will find out whether my teachings come from God or whether I speak on my own.

Whoever speaks on their own does so to gain personal glory. But he who seeks the glory of the one who sent Him is a man of truth. There is nothing false about him. Has not Moses given you the law? Yet not one of you keeps the Law. Why are you trying to kill me? You are demon possessed, the crowd answered. Who is trying to kill you? Jesus said to them, I did one miracle and you are all amazed yet because Moses gave you circumcision, though actually it did not come from Moses, but from the patriarchs, you circumcise a boy on the Sabbath. Now, if a boy can be circumcised on the Sabbath so that the law of Moses may not be broken, why are you angry with me for healing a man’s whole body on the Sabbath? Stop judging by mere appearances, but instead judge correctly. Today I want to talk to you out of this passage about the subject competing gospels. Competing gospels. What you just read has a lot more under the surface than it first seems on rather than it seems on first hearing. Jesus has left Galilee after about seven months of quiet teaching and instruction with his disciples in that northern portion of the sea of Galilee.

And as we read two weeks ago, he has turned his agenda and turned his mind away from Galilee and towards Jerusalem on this mission of mercy. And he’s about to enter Jerusalem, that’s the capital. But there’s a holiday that’s coming and it’s in the middle of the feast that he decides to go. And he reenters Jerusalem in the middle of the feast of Tabernacles. And he waits until the middle of the feast of Tabernacle because he knows the religious leaders want to kill him. They will eventually kill him, but now is just not quite the right timing. So he waits until the middle of the week because the crowds would be really large at this point and it’d be difficult to arrest Him with such a large crowd. Why, you might ask, is Jesus even willing to go to a place where he might be arrested? And it’s specifically because Jesus wants to talk to these Jewish religious people that he has not really interacted with for about two years.

This is what some people call the Temple ministry. It begins here, and it extends all the way through John, chapter eight, verse 59. It’s all during this feast of tabernacle. It covers a period of about two or three days, by the way little section of Scripture is going to take us four weeks to cover. I’m going to do this week, we have next week, and then Joe Stearns is going to do the two weeks after that. This series is long, by the way, but I love it. So two days is going to take us four weeks to cover. So you have the scene, right? Jesus is about to enter into Jerusalem. Jerusalem is filled with people. There’s a mass of them. They’re pilgrims who have migrated from everywhere to attend one of the big three festivals of the year. So he shows up at the temple. He draws, no doubt, a super large crowd, and he begins to teach. He’s teaching because that’s what rabbis do, and Jesus is a rabbi. Rabbis would go to the Temple. They would find in the courtyard, which, by the way, was about 36 acres large, super large. They would find this little spot carved out for them. They would take a seat there, and they would begin to teach publicly in the Temple courtyards. They would start school. Jesus is likely doing exactly that.

You can picture the large courtyard. Jesus walks in. There are thousands upon thousands upon thousands of people. It’s the middle of the week. Everyone’s already listening. Jesus finds his little corner. His disciples gather around Him, and he begins to teach. What is he teaching, you might ask? Well, he’s teaching what he’s always taught. He’s teaching about the kingdom. He’s probably using parables and stories. He’s teaching about sin and repentance, about salvation, about hypocrisy, about the true ways to God. This is what we call his yoke. He’s teaching what it means to be a disciple of Jesus Christ. It’s his philosophy of life. It’s his worldview. Another way we can describe this is he’s teaching his gospel, his good news, that he wants other people to adopt? Here’s the thing. There are thousands of teachers, or rather hundreds of teachers probably in that temple square. Why is Jesus still teaching when everyone else is teaching? And this is why. It’s because Jesus believed that His Gospel is better than any other Gospel. If those gospels were sufficient, Jesus wouldn’t need to teach. But Jesus stands there and teaches because their Gospels are not sufficient for people’s salvation or for their good news.

It’s not a burden he wants to give to people. It’s not a yoke he wants people to bear. Instead, he realizes that their system, the system of the world at the time was broken. They needed a new worldview. They needed a new way to consider life. And so Jesus is going to make many arguments to explain why His Gospel is the best. He’s going to use some powerful illustrations. He’s going to debate some religious people. And at the end of all of this, over the course of three days, many people will choose His Gospel. That’s what John eight, verse 30 says. But it’s going to take a couple of days of convincing. So as he’s teaching, the Bible says the crowds are amazed. They’re so amazed, in fact, that this is the way they respond. This is verse 15. The Jews there were amazed and asked, how did this man get such learning without having been taught? Jesus is teaching a group of people who are very religious. They committed themselves to knowing other teachers of the Bible. They’re not saying Jesus is dumb here. What they’re saying is by saying like this without having been taught, they’re saying they cannot determine where his learning comes from.

That’s what they’re saying. They’re saying he’s brilliant, but we can’t tell what school he went to. We can’t figure out who taught him because they’re really religious. So they understood the way that rabbis taught. Rabbis would teach by quoting other rabbis. So they would stand there and say, Rabbi So and so says this, and Rabbi So and so says this, and Rabbi So and so says this. They quoted other rabbis because it allowed them to validate their message, but it also would inform the people of where their learning came from, right? So they would stand up and say, hi, I would like to talk to you today about the kingdom of the temple. This is what Rabbi Schmoli says. I just made that up. That’s probably not right. Let me just take that off the recording. Whatever. Don’t say that. But anyway, this is what Rabbi So and so says, and this is what Rabbi So and so says. And then people would say, ah, you come from that school. Ah, I understand that where your learning comes from. Jesus didn’t do any of that. But we we get that kind of the quoting of other people, right?

You can understand if you’re well schooled or maybe an expert in something you can hear when someone’s quoting someone else, right? Let’s say you like sports. You love talking about sports. And you hear someone argue, and you’re like, you sound like Stephen A. Smith. Like, I can tell. I can tell. You sound just like him. Or you hear someone talking about habits, building, identifying based identity based habits. You’re like, oh, you just read Atomic Habits. I know where you’re talking, so it’s not a bad thing. It’s just saying I know where you come from. Oh, I hear you’re a fan of John Calvin. Oh, you like NT Wright. Oh, you sound like Joe Rogan. Oh, you sound like Malcolm Gladwell or whatever, right? People in that courtyard could tell where people’s learning came from, but with Jesus, they had no idea. From whom did this man get all this information from? This idea confused his listeners to the point where later on, a guard will be before Jesus and will come back to the Pharisees after being instructed to listen to him. And the guard will say of Jesus that no one ever spoke like this man does.

Other rabbis quoted people. It was clear what school they came from. That was not what Jesus did. He didn’t quote any other rabbi. He stood totally alone, and they acknowledged his learning, they acknowledged his intellect, they acknowledged his ability to teach. But they couldn’t quite figure out where his message came from. Jesus’s message. And here’s the important point for you. Jesus’s message was so clearly different from the religion of that day that they could not put him in a camp. Again, the other open air preachers taught a message of salvation, taught a gospel message, taught a worldview message. But it was so radically different than Jesus that they had no idea where his learning came from.

I read this text and I started thinking about the Gospels of our age. Imagine there was an open square. We don’t have anything like this. I guess we have, like, Twitter, but imagine there was a temple square and there would be preachers. I thought about our day. I thought about what would the preachers of our day be saying? What worldview would they be espousing? What would they be saying is the right way to find salvation?

I wondered, what are the Gospels of our day? I started thinking about the Gospels that people say bring salvation. I came up with a couple of them. Maybe this is not exhaustive. There’s probably hundreds, but here are a couple. I thought about the message of salvation through education. You know this, right? The more you know, the more you study, the harder the more you go to school, the more the more the world will be free from the problems that we created. There’s a belief that, right, that if you just go through school, if you educate yourself, if you educate the population, we could rid the world of violence, of murder, of poverty, of racism, of bigotry, of greed, of misogyny, of gossip, the gospel of education, that education is the way the world will find salvation. I read a post this week that said, because of education, the human race has made significant progress in all areas where we’re fundamentally flawed. I thought to myself, have we? Like, sure, we’ve made smartphones. I mean, smartphones are incredible. We’ve built rockets that could take men into space. But education you would admit this to has not solved the core problems of humanity, has it?

Like we started murdering people like year 20. Year 20 of humanity we were murdering people. Cain kills Abel year 20 and all of our education has yet to stop us from killing people. In fact, all of our education has allowed our technology to advance in such a way where it’s become easier to be sinful. Yes, we’ve invented ways to kill people faster and to kill more people. Our education has allowed us to produce guns and nuclear bombs and unmanned military drones. Congratulations. Education has not solved the murder problem. Education has actually increased our capacity to murder people. And don’t get me wrong, education is amazing. But here’s the point. It’s not a gospel because it’s an incomplete gospel. Education is wonderful, but it’s not the full good news, because if it was, it would solve the problems that are fundamental to humanity. I started thinking about other gospels. How about the evangelist who would preach about the gospel of political revolution, that if we people who believe that if we just had a better person in charge of us, problems would go away. The Poynter Institute has a list of all political promises that have been made in campaigns.

And I just looked at the list and I just thought the list was very funny. Politicians have promised to end discrimination. How’s that going politicians? To solve immigration, to make housing more affordable. In South Florida, that one is hilarious. To eliminate private benefit for people who serve in public office, to give everyone free education. This is not like a fringe person. One person said they wanted to have a colony on the moon. One person said they’re going to end obesity. An ex presidential candidate promised this is true, to cure Diabetes, Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease. Well done, guys. Again, we should participate and do our civil duties. But that is not a gospel. That’s not a gospel. Certainly there’s wonderful things that can come about by political transformation, but that’s not a good gospel. The people who say those things, they can’t actually do those things. They can’t fulfill the things they say. And here’s my point. You and I cannot find real joy and peace through gospels other than the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The gospel preachers in our society preach accumulation of wealth. If you have more wealth, you can find freedom. That is not a gospel.

If you have more self esteem, you can find gospel. If you could just live out the way you wanted to live, we can find salvation through Hedonism, through sex, drugs, and rock and roll. If you live like you’re having a party, then real joy and real peace will come. And look, people are teaching us this and promoting this at the temple squares, on Twitter, on Instagram, in your job, by the water cooler as you engage with people. These are the gospels that are being preached. And I’ve learned that, in fact, most of these gospels are not gospels at all. In fact, they produce slavery. So here’s the message, right? These are the gospels of our day. But Jesus had gospels too. Jesus heard or the people were told that obedience to the law, if you could just obey the law, then you’ll find salvation. And the Bible will tell us that actually, the law was always there to make sure that you were conscious of your own sin. So it was not good news. It was not something you could live on. And Jesus is competing his gospel against the world’s gospels. And what I see in this story is just incredible.

Jesus is going to give us some arguments, some arguments why he’s worth listening to. Three arguments why Jesus’s gospel is the best. They’re going to come right out of this text. Are you guys with me? Okay, number one. First argument. Three arguments in this text why his gospel is the best gospel. One, his message originates from God. Jesus answers the crowd. They go, Where does this man’s teaching come from? He could simply say, it comes from me. I’m God. Be quiet. But he doesn’t say that. He says, my teaching is not of my own. It comes from the one who sent me. Where did you get your learning from? Where did you get your learning from? He doesn’t want to exasperate the crowd. He’s saying, it’s not original to me. I’m not introducing you a new message. This isn’t self knowledge. This message comes from God. And this is where he trumps the rabbis, right? The other rabbis were quoting other rabbis. The other rabbis were quoting other rabbis. And he goes, yeah, their message comes from other rabbis. My message comes from God. My gospel is the only gospel. My message is the only message. My way to salvation is the only way to salvation. The reason I don’t sound like them is because my message comes from God, and their message doesn’t.

Jesus had no problem telling people that there was only one truth. Jesus had no problem telling people that his way was the only truth. You could take a second to look at all his claims. The claims of Jesus are astonishing. This guy is preaching in the middle of a temple court, and he is, by appearances, indistinguishable from all the other rabbis. He looks exactly like them. He looks like a man from Galilee. His deity is completely invisible to men. But men did not make the claims that Jesus made. These are some of the claims of Jesus. Jesus said he had come down from heaven. Jesus said he had existed eternally. Jesus said that his words are the same words as the Father. Jesus claimed to be the salvation of the world. He claimed to be the everlasting life, the source of everlasting life. He claimed to be the only way to get to God. He claimed to be someone who would come directly from the Father. He claimed to be someone who could raise the dead.

He claimed that his words were a fulfillment of the Old Testament. Jesus said that he was the supreme Judge of all men. He said he had no sin, that all authority in Heaven and on earth had been given to him, that he could forgive sins, that he could answer people’s prayers. Jesus would say that he’s greater than the Temple, greater than Solomon, greater than Jacob, greater than Moses, greater than Abraham. In fact, Jesus will say in this text later on in chapter eight, he will say that before Abraham existed, he existed. He will claim to be the only person that could feed your hungry soul. The light of the world, the resurrection and the life, the Anointed One, the Christ, the Messiah. These claims are beyond comprehension. For Jesus, there was no you can accept my message and also listen to the other gospels of the world. It was very clear. It’s my way or the highway. There is no middle ground. There is only one truth, and I am the only truth. I want to just let you guys know the temptation to believe another gospel still exists today. There are fine sounding arguments that tell you if you just had a little money, then you’d find a lot of peace.

If you just had a little bit more, if you could just do whatever you wanted, then you’d feel really free. And over and over again, the claims of Jesus stand apart from the claims of the world. If you follow Jesus, you follow Jesus alone. There are no other gospels that can hold a candle to Christ Jesus. That’s what he’s saying. Yesterday or sorry, on Friday, I got a chance to meet with another minister that works on the west coast of Florida. He works in Naples. He actually works in Sarasota. But we were meeting at Naples. And so I went to Hertz to rent a car because I have a terrible car that really I’m not sure if it could take me all the way to Naples. So I went to hertz and I’m renting a car. And my credit card allows me to get, like, hertz super platinum membership something or other. So President Circle, I think is what it’s called. So I go there and I give them my car, and they say, you could pick any car you want. And I said, any car I want. This is amazing. So I’m like, what cars do you have?

They give me a list of all their cars, and one of those cars is like kind of like a dream car for me. So I was like, I want that car. That’s the car I want. And I got into the dream car and I’m driving across the coast, and I’m like, this is so cool. And I’m thinking to myself, I’m going to have such an amazing day. Like, what an amazing day I’m going to have. Driving across the coast in my dream car, I had believed the gospel of, if you get a nice car, things are wonderful. You know what I learned? Driving in that really nice car is like driving in any other car. By the time you get there, you’re annoyed, you’re tired, you don’t want to drive anymore in your nice car. And this particular car basically drives itself, but it’s still I had no interest in driving the car. So I’m just saying, all of us are held captive by false gospels. I got home, I actually felt a little depressed. I’m not kidding, because I thought I was going to find joy by driving the car. This is real. I was like, this is going to be amazing.

I’m going to have the great. And I got home and I was tired. I want to return this stupid car and go back to my car. I’m just saying we have competing gospels, but there’s only one gospel of a man who said these words come directly from God Almighty, his school. His school is the school of God. And all the other people are false prophets. They’re all phony gospels. Argument number one, right? That’s the argument number one. My words come from God. The second argument is found in verse 17. Look at it says, anyone who chooses to do the will of God will find out whether my teachings come from God or whether I speak on my own. I want you to picture the crowd again. There are thousands of people. Jesus is probably standing up. There are people sitting around him and he’s talking to them. He’s teaching them a gospel message. He’s saying, this is what it means to follow me. And he’s like, look, my words come from God. You should believe me. And then he says this, if you obey God, you’re on a collision course with my words. Number two, the second argument, his words can be tested and proven true.

This is the test. If you search for God, if you’re really looking for God, if you’re looking for God, if you’re hoping to follow God, if you do it in earnest, you are on a collision course with the words of Jesus Christ. So if you want to know who I am, Jesus says, if you want to know if I’m true, look for God. If you find God, you’re going to find me. That’s what he’s saying. Look for truth. Look for the Logos, look for the truths of God. Look for the better life offered by the Scriptures. Look for the blessings offered by the Scriptures, and you will find out that my words are true. This is such a good argument because he’s not saying, if you come to me, you’re going to find out that my words are true. He’s saying, no, you don’t even have to come to me. Look for God the Father, and you’re going to run into me. And then you’ll see that my words are the truth. It’s amazing. You can test this. If you’re new here, if you’re trying to figure out god. You can test this. You can test this.

You can seek God in earnest. You can seek the good things of God. And I’m telling you, you’re going to run right into Jesus. Pursue the good things of God, and you will run into Jesus’s teachings. This is like Jeremiah 29, verse 13. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart, I will be found by you, declares the Lord. God’s promising, if you seek him, you’re going to find Him. And Jesus is saying, if you seek God, you’re going to find Jesus. Seek him and you will find him. Seek Him and you will find out that his words are true. That’s the second argument. The third argument. The third argument is so good, it’s about his motives. It’s his motives. His motives is pure. Are pure. His motivation is pure. That’s why his motivation is pure. So there’s three arguments right here in this text. One, his words come from God. Two, his words can be proven true. Three, his motivation is pure. False teachers, charlatans, frauds, the hypocrites, the phony messiahs are all in it for personal gain. Even today, the people who tell you you can get rich fast on Instagram tell you to buy their course. They’re trying to ask, they’re like, you can get rich by giving me money. Wonderful. They do it for power. Politicians, though we pray for politicians that we honor politicians. We understand the motive of politicians. There’s not very many pure motive politicians. They do it for prominence. People want to be seen as important. They do it for an ego boost. That’s what’s involved in the package. False teachers are self centered fleecers of the sheep. They seek their own glory. They’re more interested in the praise of man or the power of men than they are in the service of the men they’re put in charge to serve. False messiahs seek their own glory, every one of them, for their own personal gain, for their own personal elevation. It’s the same in our day money, power, prestige, authority, ego. But look at what Jesus says about his motivation. Verse 18 whoever speaks on their own does so to gain personal glory. But he who seeks the glory of the one who sent him, he’s talking about himself, is a man of truth. There is nothing false about him. Jesus says, I have no ego. Jesus seeks the glory of his Father, and he seeks the care of his people. That’s the motivation of a true Savior, right?

That’s the motivation of a person who preaches a real gospel. What is this savior like? Our Savior is the type of Savior that washes dirty feet. He serves the lowly. He did not come to serve, but the Bible said, or rather, to be served, but to serve. He humbles himself in love. He bears other people’s burdens. Jesus sought no money, no home. He had nothing. And yet he gave everything. He rendered all glory, all honor to his father and not even to himself. The Bible says that he pours out his deity. Jesus is the type of savior, and I challenge you to find a person who preaches another gospel, who has such a pure motivation. Jesus had no personal glory in mind. False saviors rattle their own banks. They glorify themselves. They call attention to themselves. They try to gain more and gain more and gain more and take a little bit from you. And take a little bit from you. They say, I need a jet and I need a plane, and I need more money, and I need more power, and I need you to obey me, and I need all these things.

Jesus was nothing like that. He was humble and totally selfless. The text continues as he continues to make the argument. He’s trying to again persuade this group of people that his gospel is better than the false teachers. So he turns his attention away from the crowds and towards the false teachers. This is what he says. Has not Moses given you the law? Yet not one of you keeps the law. Why are you trying to kill me? What a statement. Fully aware of the desire for them to kill me, for them to kill him, Jesus asks an interesting question. Didn’t Moses give you the law? Didn’t Moses give you the law? And what’s in one of those laws, thou shalt not do what? Murder. Moses gave you the law about not killing people. And here you are. You proud, legalist. You’re also a rule breaker. Thou shalt not murder. Here’s the thing. You’re a hypocrite. All of those religious leaders, those false prophets, those false teachers, they’re all hypocrites. They’re hypocrites. Jesus is trying to instruct his group in front of him. Don’t settle for following hypocrites. I want to encourage you to do the same thing.

Don’t settle for following hypocrites. Now, all of us, to some degree or another, we’re not perfect. Even me standing up here, I’m not perfect. There’s probably some hypocrisy deep in me, and maybe even not even so deep in me. But you don’t follow me. You follow Jesus, right? And you don’t follow the person who leads your community group. You follow Jesus. You only follow us to the extent in which we follow Jesus. But I want to just make a point, like if you’re following Andrew Tate or whatever. These guys are hypocrites. They’re all hypocrites. They’re all hypocrites. All of them. Every single one. Don’t settle for following a hypocrite. Seek to follow someone who lives in truth. And Jesus says he lives in truth. The crowd doesn’t know who he’s talking to. The crowd doesn’t get it. And so they reply, you are demon possessed. This is a go to criticism of Jesus. The crowd answered, who’s trying to kill you? They don’t know that in about six months time at the passover, they’re actually going to be trying to kill him too. They don’t know that. But Jesus is not really talking to them, he’s talking to the religious leaders.

And so he continues the argument and man, this argument is so good, we don’t have time to unpack it because we’re running out of time. But let me just give you just a short synopsis of it. Jesus said to them, I do one miracle and you are all amazed. Moses gave you circumcision. He explains that you circumcise people on the 8th day, even if it’s the Sabbath, and I heal someone’s whole body on the Sabbath and you’re trying to kill me. He’s talking about John, chapter five. When he heals the man at the pool of Bethesda the last time he’s at the temple, he heals them. They go crazy. They condemn him. And he’s like just so we’re clear, you are total hypocrites. You do something on the Sabbath and you say it’s rather you do something on the Sabbath, and then when I heal on the Sabbath, you say I’m demon possessed or I’m in sin. You guys are just a bunch of hypocrites. It’s important to note that this instruction is for or is against the Pharisees, but for the crowds. He’s trying to explain to them these guys are not good people to follow.

And then he closes the whole conversation with this declaration: stop judging by mere appearances, but instead judge correctly. I like the other versions that say judge rightly. Judge rightly. He’s saying, I want you to examine the evidence. Not to just look at the richest, not to look at the most powerful, not to look at the people who seem like they make the most money, not to look to the people who feel like they have it all together. I want you to stop looking at appearances and think critically which gospel is worthy of following. And then make a right judgment. I can say the same thing to all of us today. I look at the landscape of our world and I see division, sin, fear, and everyone has an answer to solve all of the problems. And a lot of times the people who have answers are the people who started the problem. And maybe it’s nihilistic of me to say, but I don’t trust any of them and neither should you. You know who I trust? Jesus. I trust the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I don’t trust any other gospel. I don’t trust any other teacher. I don’t trust any other books. You know, books are great if they inform the gospel, amen. But I don’t trust any of that stuff. All these people are in for personal gain. And over and over and over and over again I find that the only message that resonates for generation, that the world can find salvation through, is the message of Jesus Christ. Don’t be fleeced by false teachers. Find the true gospel, make right judgments. Choose Jesus. He. Has a pure motive. He has an effective gospel and his message comes from God. Don’t put your hope in other gospels. Here’s my campaign slogan. Ready? Oh, sorry. Here’s the three things. Here’s my campaign slogan. Judge correctly. Choose, Jesus.

Let’s pray. Lord, we take communion every week and we do it as a reminder of this choice that we have made. We do it to remind ourselves that the man hanging on a tree 2000 years ago is still the hope for the world. That no matter what other people say, the hope of the world is it’s wrong. It’s been wrong. It will be wrong. In five years, it will prove to be wrong. But there’s only one gospel that has lived out for thousands and thousands and thousands of years and has proven to be true and transformed societies in rural communities and in urban communities. That has transformed the lives of all people of all races, that has transformed the lives of all people of all socioeconomic backgrounds. That has transformed the lives of all people of different educational backgrounds. It’s only one gospel. It’s the gospel of Jesus Christ. And Lord, as we take communion, Lord, I just so thankful that we get to be reminded of that today. God help us, Lord, who have been deceived by something else. To just think for a moment to run them through the questions, to run them through the questions of Jesus. To ask the question, are the gospels we’re listening to, are they hypocritical? Do they have pure motivations? Are they proven to be true? Do they have the source that comes from God? And if they don’t, Lord, let us throw those messages away and run back to the message that saves the message of Christ Jesus. Lord, we ask you today that as we take the bread that represents your body and the juice that represents your blood that we will be reminded of the amazing truth we have in the yoke of Jesus Christ and his wonderful gospel.

It’s in his name we pray. Amen.