0:00:00 - 0:00:21 A can on the maybe not so apparent downsides of continuing church attendance. And I will be specific about what I mean by church. Uh because obviously it's, it's a word that means different things to different people. But the message I wanna share with you today is that above all else, our motives ought 0:00:21 - 0:00:46 to be to learn more about Jesus and to live more like him. And so to the extent that anything impedes that anything we need to leave it behind. So I, I meant to break this out into other slides, but um my hand is injured right now and so it's not very easy to type. So sorry about that. Um I want to help 0:00:46 - 0:01:06 you see that you are actually bombarded by invitations from the Lord to find something better than what you have. Now, the things that we're going to go over here in these sentences. I've used the word church, however, you can expand your application of these principles to anything in your life and it 0:01:06 - 0:01:31 will have the same effect to show you a path that draws you nearer to God, for example. Um If you have problems that your church cannot solve. That is a call from Jesus to you to find something better than your church. Now, almost everyone, this is as good a time as ever to address this point. Almost 0:01:30 - 0:01:54 everyone in a church would say my church is the Lord's church. What happens is, is we take that position and we push against it. We live into it, we live according to it. The Lord will respond with signals that indicate that that is not the case. He will illustrate to us the deviation between what he 0:01:54 - 0:02:19 is and what he offers and what the church we attend claims but does not have. So if your church has problems or I'm sorry if you have problems that your church cannot solve. I'm not saying that the church has a solution and you won't apply it. And therefore you say it's the church's fault. And again 0:02:18 - 0:02:37 , all of this applies to much broader senses, right? Uh much broader applications. You you can't fault something. If you're not following the recipe, you can't say it's a terrible recipe because I don't like the way it tastes. But if you have problems that your church can't solve. Look at what the Lord 0:02:37 - 0:03:00 says in John 1633 he says these things I have spoken unto you that in me, you might have peace in the world, you shall have tribulation, but be of good cheer. I have overcome the world. I didn't explicitly say anxiety on this list. But that's another thing. If you find yourself with a lot of worry, worry 0:03:00 - 0:03:24 I do mention later, but he says, have peace in me. You can have peace because I have overcome the world. So if you have problems that your church can't solve, there is a gap between what Jesus is and what your church is and you cannot address that gap without leaving your church. What about apparent 0:03:24 - 0:03:44 contradictions that your church can't resolve almost every church will encourage you not to look into the cracks. However, that's where you're going to find more of God. If you find an uh an apparent contradiction and your church can't resolve it. Consider what the Lord says in Isaiah 118. He says, come 0:03:44 - 0:04:07 now let us reason together saith the Lord in um in James, I didn't quote this but he says, if any man lack wisdom, let him ask of God because He will not upbraid you upbraid is, is basically he's not going to attack you for asking him a question. He wants us to ask him questions. He wants us to know 0:04:07 - 0:04:27 there's another great scripture that I believe. It's also in James where he says, the Lord doesn't want us to be like dumb donkeys who are have to be led around by a bit in their mouth. He wants us to understand if you don't understand. Ask God if your church tells you not to ask God you're in the wrong 0:04:27 - 0:04:45 church, it's not the Lord's church. The Lord wants you to ask him. He wants you to know how can you know Jesus if you don't know what Jesus knows? Those two things are coupled together, the more you know what he knows, the more you will know him and the more you know him, the more of what he knows, you 0:04:45 - 0:05:08 will know. What about questions that your church can't answer. We mentioned that, that verse in James, but here's one from First Corinthians 41. This then is how you ought to regard us. This is Paul speaking and he's saying this is how you ought to regard the apostles as servants of Christ and as those 0:05:08 - 0:05:28 entrusted with the mysteries. God has revealed. Now, if you search the word mysteries in the New Testament, you actually find a whole lot of references from Paul about mysteries where he describes what he believed was his duty as an apostle, as a leader in the church of Christ to reveal mysteries. Now 0:05:28 - 0:05:53 , if your church leaders can't answer questions, if they're not revealing mysteries, then they, then you're discovering a gap between your church and God's church. What about needs that your church can't provide, that's a whole wide ranging basket, whatever you could imagine needs that your church can't 0:05:52 - 0:06:18 provide. The Lord said to the 70. When they returned from a mission, he sent them on. He said, when I sent you out without a purse bag or sandals, did you lack anything. They said no, not a thing. Luke 2235. If you are truly in the Lord's path, it's not to say you're gonna be overflowing with riches 0:06:17 - 0:06:48 , but you will have your needs met the Lord provisions for his servants. What about worries that your church can't diminish. You're riddled with concerns and anxieties. The Lord said peace, I leave with you my peace I give unto you. Not as the world giveth. Give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled 0:06:47 - 0:07:24 . Neither let it be afraid. John 1427. If you're worried, what's being revealed to you is the distance from where you are to where the Lord is because where he is, there's nothing but peace. What about if you have, if you feel weighed down by burdens, they're too heavy for you and beyond your church's 0:07:23 - 0:07:54 ability to support the Lord said, come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest. Matthew 1128. What if your heart cries out desire for good things that your church cannot lead you to? You, find yourself hungry and thirsting for blessings that your church can't provide desires 0:07:54 - 0:08:35 that your church can't fulfill whatever that might be. The Lord said hitherto, have you asked nothing in my name? Ask and you shall receive that? Your joy may be full. June 1624. What if you face challenges that your church can't give you the strength to overcome. The Lord said, I saw Satan fall like 0:08:34 - 0:09:05 lightning from heaven. Behold, I give you the authority to trample on serpents and scorpions and over all the power of the enemy and nothing shall by any means hurt you. Nevertheless, do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rather rejoice because your names are written in heaven 0:09:05 - 0:09:40 . Luke 10. No, there are many more examples, but we'll leave it at that suffice it to say, I know that the Lord provides. He provides what we seek. He provides what we need. You ought to pay attention to the things that you need and the things that you want because they are a call from God. They're a 0:09:40 - 0:10:17 trumpet. They're, they're an ensign, they're a map that show you the way to more and to better. And what is that way? I intentionally used this last verse that we quoted it is to find and take upon you the name of Christ as you take upon yourself. His name. Then your name will be written in heaven or 0:10:16 - 0:10:52 it will begin to be like the name written in heaven. What is the name in a scriptural sense? A name is the character. It's what makes an individual who they are. It's what defines them and distinguishes them. What is the name of Christ? It is everything about him that makes him Christ and the purpose 0:10:51 - 0:11:26 of a church is to learn that name and to take it upon you. However, when churches aren't done the way they're meant to be done, they can actually have the opposite effect. So modern churches are not like what I've described here and I'll describe more in a second instead of facilitating your understanding 0:11:26 - 0:11:57 of what Jesus is like and enabling you to be more like him, they impede you. There are many things that they will not let you seek, they will say don't desire that don't ask that. Don't look at that, don't read that, don't think about that. Don't do this, don't do that. And all of those instructions 0:11:56 - 0:12:16 have the potential of conflicting with what the Lord is telling you. For example, you might have a doctrinal question or maybe the Lord has told you something, you were reading the scriptures and you asked about a certain verse and he opened your mind to all these things that you've never thought about 0:12:16 - 0:12:35 and you just see tremendous value in it. If you take that to church and maybe you share it in a Sunday school lesson or something, they all shut you down. Maybe you get called aside and asked not to say that again, or maybe people just get angry at you. And it's really obvious. And so the message that 0:12:35 - 0:13:01 all this sends is when it comes to doctrine, the truth is what we say. It is. Well, that is antithetical to Christ. That is not the way he works we're all in this to find out more about the truth. And you don't do that by presuming you have it all already. You do it by, as Jesus said, taking the lower 0:13:01 - 0:13:24 seats, assuming you're a fool. But assuming that anything you think, you know, might be incorrect or incomplete in a church that doesn't have that woven deeply into its ethos that, that we're all in this to seek more about and from God, not in it to claim we already have it all. A church that doesn't 0:13:24 - 0:13:52 have that woven into its ethos is probably the wrong place to be. Another example we can think about is leadership. This is a very important topic. Essentially. What, what you'll have in today's churches is you'll have people at the pulpit who are either one or both of the following, uh who have one 0:13:52 - 0:14:19 or both of the following qualities. One, they'll say, hey, I'm just a normal person like you and we're all in this together. That's actually the better of the two and that egalitarian mindset. Um It, it, it allows for quite a bit of positive growth in everyone if we're just a couple of friends gathered 0:14:18 - 0:14:46 together, talking about Jesus and trying to figure out more about him. Well, we can learn an awful lot. There's a lot of truth that'll fit into that window. However, the rub comes when those churches adopt ideas or practices that contradict that statement. For example, suppose we're just a bunch of friends 0:14:45 - 0:15:03 getting together and, and the, the say, the pastor gets up in front of the church and all the time. He's just saying, I'm a sinner too. We're all sinners. We're just, there's a hospital for sinners and we're just trying to help people get better and give them a safe place to get better. But then the 0:15:03 - 0:15:28 pastor is the guy you go to when you need counsel about your life and you're, you're struggling to know what Jesus would do in your situation. How does that work? Or the priest or the bishop or whatever the title is the leader of the congregation um disciplines you in some way because you've done something 0:15:27 - 0:15:54 wrong and someone's, someone's uh pinched you and now they're in charge of dealing out the judgment. Didn't Jesus say let him who is without sin be the first to cast the stump. Now people misinterpret that to say that Jesus taught us that we should ignore faults and just pretend like everyone's perfect 0:15:54 - 0:16:27 and never judge anyone. That's not at all. What he said. A group of men had come with a woman taken in adultery and they were challenging him to stone her as the law commanded. He asked them if any of them were worthy to deal out that judgment because they were living in sin, was he he was not, he was 0:16:26 - 0:16:56 morally able to condemn that woman. No one else there was. Is it possible to live without sin after repenting. Yes, it is. So all those people who accused that woman that could have changed their hearts and repented of all their sins. And then if he had asked again, someone could say, well, I could throw 0:16:55 - 0:17:27 the stone if I wanted to because I'm not sinning, but a pastor that stands up and says, I'm just one of you. He has no moral ground and in fact, is sinning before God. If he judges the sins of anyone else in his congregation, he is morally incapable of that. And why does that matter? Because Jesus taught 0:17:27 - 0:17:48 that if you have a splinter in your eye, I'm sorry, a beam in your eye. Very large obstruction. You can't see the splinter in someone else. You can't see, you cannot judge the faults of another accurately while you are living in sin as a very important lesson. We could talk a lot more about that. But 0:17:48 - 0:00:00 we have to move on. The point is it's prevalent in churches today for leadership to play both sides of the coin to occupy two mutually exclusive positions, which of course you cannot do. And I mentioned there's another position here. I, I we started with the egalitarian mindset when it's convenient. 0:00:00 - 0:18:35 You know, when excusing their own sins, a church leader will say, oh, we're all sinners, we're all just trying, you know, but when it comes to them exercising authority upon their, their congregants, they'll say, well, I have authority over you do what I say, the flip side of that or sorry. The alternate 0:18:34 - 0:19:06 to that is when, when uh people say that their authority stems from something other than being more like Jesus, it doesn't matter what it is. Someone laid their hands on them. They have some uh pedigree of, of um ordinations or they went to some school and got a degree from someone, some institution 0:19:05 - 0:19:27 . It doesn't matter what it is. It doesn't even matter if they say God called me to this office. I had this spiritual experience. You know, if, if they pull in Isaiah and say I was taken up into heaven. He touched my lips with this coal, an angel did and God spoke to me and he called me to do this. Now 0:19:26 - 0:19:54 , all the stories I've heard of people getting called are probably less better than that. And still the question comes down to just one thing. Do you know Jesus more than the people you're serving, you're ministering to and do you actually live according to what? You know, that's it. So, in modern churches 0:19:54 - 0:20:21 , this is divorced and they say, well, authority is different than righteousness. That is an argument that Jesus never made. He said I know the father more than any of you and I am more like him than any of you. And that is my authority. He came down from heaven to demonstrate the one that none of us 0:20:21 - 0:20:51 had seen and that is his authority. So if your church is led by people who say, I'm just like you, I'm a sinner just like you. But who also have a church. You see, because there's a difference between a, a house meeting where it's just a bunch of friends and they, they have uh sodas and snacks. So must 0:20:50 - 0:21:12 have. And uh and they're all just sitting around talking about Jesus. That's wonderful. But that's not a church, is it? Nobody would call that a church. Now, I think that that's a lot better than any organized church. I know of. That's a lot better. That's a couple of humble people who recognize that 0:21:12 - 0:21:50 they are all lost sheep and they have no shepherd and a calling out to the good shepherd and Jesus said, wherever, there's a group of people who are gathered in my name, I will be there. And if they know how to take advantage of that promise, they'll be infinitely better off than anyone in any organized 0:21:49 - 0:22:24 church that doesn't follow that same principle of, of only taking it as far as likeness to God present justifies. So if Jesus appeared literally in their midst, they could not continue to treat that meeting the way they did up until that moment could they? And thus, it would be if a person were in their 0:22:24 - 0:22:54 midst who knew Jesus better than them and to the extent he was like him, they would have to react the same way. Do you get it? Finally? I want to spotlight this third problem with existing churches. This is not an exhaustive list. This is, these are highlights, this is how they shut down. Anyone who's 0:22:54 - 0:23:12 looking for something more and the attitude there is, we already have everything that anyone should want. If you have a question, please just shut up. If you're looking for greater blessings, you're doing something wrong, you're looking beyond the, the mark. Why can't you just be happy with what we have 0:23:12 - 0:23:42 ? We have everything you need. And they will say that because they are the Lord's church. You're seeking for anything more than what they have is you turning away from God, which is an absolutely absurd argument. Now, I've said this many times before, but I'm happy to, to hit redial whenever you hear 0:23:41 - 0:24:09 anything or practice anything about discovering greater truth. It's a very good process to back test this against the Lord's Mortal ministry. What do I mean by this? If, if you're gonna design a AAA prediction algorithm for the stock market, one of the things you're gonna do before you put any money 0:24:09 - 0:24:30 into it in real life is you're gonna obtain past market data from the stock market and you're going to pretend like those things haven't happened yet and you're gonna feed it through your program and if your program loses tons of money, you're not going to deploy it in the real world because your your 0:24:30 - 0:24:53 logical conclusion will be, it will lose money in the future. If it was going to lose money in the past, it would lose money in the future. That might not be true, but it's as true as you can get in under the circumstances. So the same goes with testing truth, whatever our practices are, if it would 0:24:53 - 0:25:19 have caused us to condemn the Lord in his mortal ministry, odds are, it's not a good technique. So if you get a church leader, for example, saying anyone who questions, what we say is an apostasy. Well, if you were a Jew in the time of Jesus, that practice would have condemned him because he preached 0:25:19 - 0:25:45 against what the the leadership was saying in doing openly, he preached against it. So this is another example that fails the test. This idea of if you're seeking for more, you're turning away from God. I already shared a bunch of scriptures about that, didn't I? He wants us to seek for what we want 0:25:45 - 0:26:08 . He wants us to ask him for more. If we want more, he wants us to, to accurately recognize the limitations of the good that we have. So we turn to him because he is the source of everything that matters and everything beyond what we have. How would he be upset with us for that? It's exactly what he 0:26:08 - 0:26:32 told us to do. But more than that, it's exactly what a loving father would want, especially one that has all things. OK. So what is a church? Let's let's uh go to jesus' definition of this. We could pull this from several sources, but this is the one I went with. This is an example of the Lord speaking 0:26:32 - 0:26:59 to a man anciently a righteous man. He says, thou art my servant in a covenant with thee that thou shalt have eternal life. Well, that seems pretty nice, doesn't it? And thou shalt serve me and go forth in my name and shalt gather together my sheep and he that will hear my voice shall be my sheep and 0:26:59 - 0:27:23 him shall ye receive into the church and him will I also receive for behold, this is my church and I put an ellipsis here. The stuff after the ellipsis is a new thought. It's not me trying to hide the real point of the verse. OK. This is from Mosiah 26 in the book Mormon. Now a little bit of back story 0:27:23 - 0:27:51 . This was a guy who had heard something about the gospel and lived it vividly and for a long time and the Lord came to him and said these things. Now, the model here is pretty clear. You live what you know about Jesus. He teaches you more. You live that too. You continue in this cycle until you have 0:27:51 - 0:28:29 developed a uh rich real relationship with the Lord. Not just figurative, not just emotionally but a real interactive, informational, intimate relationship with the Lord as one man speaks to another. And what happens is as anyone draws closer to the Lord and becomes more like him. And those two things 0:28:29 - 0:29:05 are synonymous, you can't separate them. That's what it means. As that happens, that person becomes capable of demonstrating more of the Lord to more people because he will know the Lord more than more people do make sense. And the duty incumbent upon all of us is not just to do this, but to realize 0:29:05 - 0:29:35 that in doing this, what we're doing is we're showing other people how he is. That's to go forth in his name and gather his sheep. It's to show the world how he is to the extent we know so far because we live constantly doing exactly what we believe he would in our place and nothing else. And how does 0:29:35 - 0:29:59 that gather sheep? Maybe it makes sense that that's what a shepherd would do because that's what the good shepherd does. And we're following his example when you gather his sheep because you unite people in Christ, you show them what he's like. And then as they choose, and if they choose to be more like 0:29:58 - 0:30:23 him, they become more similar. And it's not similar in the sense of here's a set of random people. We're just gonna average them. Everyone is drawing nearer to the example of the Lord through those who know him better, the demonstration of those who know him better. But whose voice is it? It's the Lord's 0:30:23 - 0:30:44 voice inasmuch as it accurately reflects the Lord. It's the Lord's voice. That's a gradient. Right. It's not all or nothing. It's another problem with modern churches. Everything's all or nothing. There's no, well, I learned this from him and maybe there's something better still. In fact, I can almost 0:30:44 - 0:31:04 guarantee it because he's everything and I'm nothing but I learned this particular thing and as far as what it's better than anyone who's entertaining, anything less than that could improve by coming up to this. And let's lay all of our cards on the table and go with the best that we've got. And then 0:31:04 - 0:31:40 let's keep seeking even better. And what he told this man in Mosiah 26 he explained that a church is a set of people who are doing all they can to become like a living example of what Jesus is like. So in the perfect frame that living example would be the Lord himself. But as we'll get to later, that's 0:31:39 - 0:32:02 something that we come up to. It's not where we start, which is another fault of modern churches is they pretend it's related to this all or nothing idea. They pretend that somehow you can teach someone what exactly what Jesus is like in just a short little process, maybe even a moment and maybe you 0:32:02 - 0:32:32 don't even ever have to talk about what Jesus is like, you just say the sinner's prayer and Shaam you know everything there is to know about him. So a church is a set of people that is emulating in a living example of Jesus Christ. That's what it is. That's the Lord's definition because the gospel is 0:32:31 - 0:32:59 to learn more about how Jesus is and to live everything you learn, that's it. Everything else is either just fulfilling that pattern or elaborating on that pattern. We'll get to some interesting scriptures there. So what does the world say? A church is if you go into any of these Christian churches so 0:32:59 - 0:33:19 called? And you say, well, what's a church? What are you gonna find? We're gonna find fantastic mission statements. They've got the best publicists in the world in some of these institutions, or at least the best paid coming up with wonderful sounding mission statements like things like it's the United 0:33:19 - 0:33:41 Body of believers in Christ and we're just trying to live like him. And uh what you'll find though is when you dig into how they bring that to pass, they're practicing something very different than what they're preaching by preaching something very different than they've claimed in their mission statement 0:33:40 - 0:34:10 . Now, there are many scriptures that discuss the errors of modern churches. Two of my favorite chapters are in Matthew 23 and second E 528. Um Maybe in another video, I will walk through Matthew 23. I can't do that right now for time limitations. But here's a summary, modern churches do not enable people 0:34:10 - 0:34:37 to be more like Jesus. Instead they prevent people from becoming more like Jesus. How well one, they omit the weightier matters. They don't actually teach what Jesus is like. It's an amazing thing. You can go to a church that says it's a Christian church and you can sit through a service and you can 0:34:37 - 0:35:07 get through the whole thing without any mention of anything about how Jesus is about some story from his life or some application of how we can live our lives more like him. So that's pretty amazing and sad. What else? They persuade people that he is less than he is? What do I mean by that? Because most 0:35:07 - 0:35:26 people attending organized churches would bristle at that one. They'd admit the first one hesitantly. They'd be like, yeah, sometimes we do that. But, but this one, they'd get a little mad at, they persuade people that Jesus is less than he actually is. What do I mean by that? By the way, that is the 0:35:26 - 0:35:50 definition of the word blasphemy. You might not know that I grew up in a um quasi religious environment like we were holiday Christian kind of people. But I, I thought the, the, the definition that I was taught about blasphemy is uh is something like, you know, saying certain cuss words or something 0:35:49 - 0:36:16 , I don't know. But the actual literal definition is to persuade people that God is less than he is. This is why Jesus got in big trouble. One of the charges he was crucified on was blasphemy. Um because he had quote made himself equal to God. And this was very, very backwards because it turns out that 0:36:16 - 0:36:50 , that um the most glorifying thing you can do a show how a sinner can be transformed by God into a saint. That's, that is glory, is that change, that delta God's glory is his power to draw people to Him, his power to help people become more like Him, not just help but but actually enable it. It is not 0:36:49 - 0:37:14 possible without it without him. Jesus said, no man can come to the father except he draw him or he actually he said, no man come to me except the father draw him. It's ST John. So how do modern churches persuade people that Jesus is less than He is? Well, they say things like you can't change or it's 0:37:14 - 0:37:57 ok to constantly be tempted by things. It's ok to still be a sinner. At least you're trying see their God doesn't have the power to pull people out of sin. My God is a mighty God. He is mighty to save. There is nothing he can't do. And I know that because I pushed hard against it in the life, cannot 0:37:57 - 0:38:28 produce a challenge that God cannot overcome. And there are many other examples of this, of how modern churches persuade people that God is less than He is. They, they teach that we can go to heaven and experience everything that anyone could ever experience there while being no different than we are 0:38:28 - 0:38:59 right now. Or that the change comes somehow by magic. But it's something that's, that's, uh, that's, uh, forced upon us. It's not something we choose. But what can you really believe that a religion that doesn't have power to change you right now will have the power to change you when you die. Why would 0:38:59 - 0:39:27 God hold off? Right. And if he can make you quote unquote holy just by doing some silly thing, some silly light thing like praying to him once or by going to church and checking off some ritual boxes because you did this or that? Well, wouldn't that be tremendously unfair to those who have not done that 0:39:27 - 0:39:50 ? If it, if the margin is really that narrow and all it takes is to get dunked in the water, you really think that that's a loving God because obviously conversion under that paradigm becomes no more than a magic trick. Why can't he just do that same magic trick to other people? Why would eternal joy 0:39:49 - 0:40:11 be withheld? Because someone didn't do some little arbitrary thing. It makes no sense. But you're not allowed to ask these questions in the churches of the world. The examples go on and on. But I will continue so that I do not modern churches teach and practice what prevents people from discovering how 0:40:10 - 0:40:56 he is Now, what is that all about in any organized church? You don't have to dig very far before you hit a boulder of some belief or some practice that they have that will forever prevent a person there from discovering and living some critical facet of the Lord's uh character. So as an example, suppose 0:40:56 - 0:41:24 you have a church that preaches that revelation comes primarily through feeling and that the Lord directs you into good things by making you feel good about them. And so praying to know the truth of something is asking God to make you feel good about it as you think about it. Now, if that isn't what 0:41:24 - 0:41:43 your church teaches, you probably think that's the most whacked out thing you've ever heard. But more than one church believes this firmly and preaches it actively. Now, what would be the effect of such a belief? Well, it turns out that when you think uh when you, when you believe something very strongly 0:41:43 - 0:42:07 and you live your life that way and you make sacrifices for it and then you're confronted with evidence that contradicts that position, you fall prey to a psychological condition called cognitive dissonance and one very strong pass it or aspect of this condition is you feel terrible emotionally, you 0:42:07 - 0:42:31 feel terrible. If it's, if it's a strong enough contradiction, you might even go through something called ego death. That's another psychological term. And that's, that's when a foundation of your self identity is removed through the observation of contradictory evidence that can't be denied. So something 0:42:30 - 0:42:50 you really, really, really thought was bedrock true is suddenly ripped out from you and it causes a lot of pain. A lot of anxiety, a lot of suffering. Well, if you've been taught your whole life that God only communicates in warm and fuzzy feelings, that's the strongest sign that whatever this thing 0:42:50 - 0:43:11 is, is from the devil that you could ever have. And so anything if you go through the, the entire body of scripture, and you made a list of every single situation that caused emotional grief, but it came from God and it was God directing people to something better. You'd come away with a list that's 0:43:11 - 0:43:38 basically as long as the scriptures. And if you believe that belief, you will be permanently cut off from God in all of those things and all of the things like those things. And so you will narrow your relationship with God to the tiniest little window that's completely insufficient to convey any recognizable 0:43:37 - 0:44:05 quantity of what has always been known as the gospel of Jesus Christ and the blessings there from, that's one teaching, that's just one teaching. So for any church, you could make a list of these things and you could call it beliefs and practices that permanently prevent anyone in this church from actually 0:44:04 - 0:44:32 knowing God. And it would be, you could make a compelling argument for those things lock tight. I listed some of these things about the L DS church in a book that I wrote, called Teaching for Doctrines and Commandments of Men tradition and modern Mormonism. Now, that wasn't the dismantling of Mormon 0:44:32 - 0:45:03 beliefs, that was a highlight of several, just a very small set of things that are really important that are really important and people got upset, ok, because organized religions, they don't allow you to improve very much. And this is a wonderful segue to the next thing because in publishing that book 0:45:02 - 0:45:29 and refusing to withdraw it. So I was, I was told by a church leader that I had two choices. I could withdraw the publication to be excommunicated. The charge, the charge was apostasy. And I said, please identify anything in this book that contradicts anything Jesus ever said or did. And he said that's 0:45:29 - 0:45:56 not the question. There's nothing in here that, that, that shows any kind of rebellion against God. The problem is that you criticized church leaders and you named names. I said, I don't consider this criticizing anyone. What I did was I showed that certain ideas that are held by many people in the L 0:45:55 - 0:46:25 DS church today contradict what the Lord has said about it in scripture. And I did the historical research to show where these beliefs began and how they started to um to demonstrate that they were not revelations from God. They began as someone's idea and they took on the, they grew legs in, into people 0:46:25 - 0:46:49 believing there were revelations from God, but there was never any revelation. And he said, no, that's criticizing church leaders. So you either pull the book or you're gonna get booted. And I said, well, I am happy to correct any error that I made anywhere in this book, however, I refuse to withdraw 0:46:48 - 0:47:19 it. And so I got booted. And this is the final point, churches today prevent people from becoming more like Jesus because they punish those who act more like Jesus. Now, Paul said, how can you learn the gospel without an example of the gospel? If an organization actively boots out anyone who somehow 0:47:18 - 0:47:41 manages to learn more about Jesus than the average person in that organization knows, then you will forever be limited to how much of Jesus you can encounter in that organization unless you become that person and then you won't last very long, right? So if you are still in an organization, it means one 0:47:41 - 0:48:06 of very few things, one, you're not very much like like God because if you were more like Him, you'd be booted out two. You are a little bit more like Him than those around you. And your time is, is short shortly at hand. Now, that won't be a mystery because people will really not like you, they're really 0:48:05 - 0:48:30 not like you. And they, the only reason will be because of your ideas about God because you are a better person than they are. So it's not just that you have some weird whacked out ideas about things, but you actually are more like Jesus. So you, you stand firmer on principle, you care more for other 0:48:29 - 0:00:00 people. You're more willing to say what's true that everyone knows, but no one wants to say you make greater sacrifices for what's right and for other people then they will and they don't like you because you make them feel bad about how they are even though that's not what you're what you're doing. 0:00:00 - 0:49:16 Let's move on. So, have you ever noticed how often in the New Testament? Jesus called people out. I don't mean call out like criticize, I mean, literally invited them to leave something. So it happens all the time. So he goes to the fisherman and, and he calls Peter and he says, leave all this behind 0:49:16 - 0:49:35 and come with me. He goes to the, the, the publican, he calls him as an apostle and he says, leave all this behind and follow me and they immediately leave it. They just leave. It's amazing. Um There are people he healed that he called to follow him and they did, he called a bunch of people and they 0:49:35 - 0:49:56 didn't come like the rich young ruler or the guy who said, I have to bury my father and he said, let the dead bury their dead. See, we could go on all day long with examples of Jesus calling people to leave Why did he do that? Why did he do that? That was almost always what he did. It wasn't some fringe 0:49:55 - 0:50:23 case, it was what he did. He went around calling people out all the time. The reason is because what you believe in the system, you're in the system you're in has a much stronger influence on your ability to hear the voice of the Lord. Then you think it's immense. So I mentioned that there was a period 0:50:23 - 0:50:44 of time as months between when I published the book, it might have been over a year. I don't remember I published this book and when I got excommunicated and obviously over that whole time, I harbored serious um deviations from the body of doctrine as believed in the L DS church. There were things that 0:50:44 - 0:51:08 I found very valuable and there were things that I found to be very much not true or, or a very little value, whatever the case might have been. And I thought that I had that all sorted out in my brain. It wasn't until I got excommunicated and I ceased going to church with every passing week. The Lord 0:51:07 - 0:51:36 increased what he was able. Well, not what he was, what he did teach me. I felt scales falling from my eyes and it amazed me being an intentional person trying to actively seek out what was better and thinking. I had figured out a few things, I guess knowing I'd figured out a few things I really was 0:51:35 - 0:52:01 surprised by just how much that environment continued to control my thoughts and feelings. So as an example of this, if you wanna see this in, in real time, whatever your religious flavor is, go to someone who's deep in it and you'll know of several sacred cows they have that are false traditions. Pick 0:52:00 - 0:52:26 one of them and uh take some time and come up with a really cogent, solid argument that contradicts it, share it with them and watch what the very first thing they say is because it's not going to be. Here's a solid rational argument for why, what you said isn't right. Instead, if you make a really rock 0:52:25 - 0:52:49 solid argument, their very first response is not gonna have anything to do with the validity of your argument. Instead their response will be something like. But what would that mean about? And they'll point to something that they believe they have because of their false belief that is of great value 0:52:49 - 0:53:09 to them and they'll basically what they'll say is what you're saying can't be true because it would mean this thing that I think I have, I don't actually have it or it's not worth what I thought it was one of those two things. Can you think of times that this happened in the scriptures? What happens 0:53:08 - 0:53:34 again and again and again, and we get to one, we'll get to one and it happens to be the other charge Jesus was crucified for. So how's that for underscoring how important it was? We are addressing the two charges that he was brought up on? He crucified for. OK. So that's an example of how false traditions 0:53:33 - 0:53:54 control your thoughts and your feelings because it takes the conversation out of the realm of is this true and into the realm of this doesn't feel good or what does this mean about this thing that I value or this thing that I thought I was, I knew a guy who had made lots of sacrifices for his religious 0:53:54 - 0:54:17 flavor and he was a really smart person and relatively informed. And when he got the little extra increment that made a lock tight case against some of the things he believed, he refused to believe it because he had made such great sacrifices for his religion, his church that he wasn't willing to bear 0:54:17 - 0:54:37 what that would, how that would revise the value of his sacrifices in his mind. Now, that was particularly sad because it, it just so happens that when you sincerely sacrifice for God, you can't go wrong. Even if you are wrong, you can't go wrong. What do I mean by that? Nothing's wasted. It just rolls 0:54:37 - 0:55:03 into a more correct target. So when, when Saul became Paul, he didn't lose what he had worked for his whole life as a pharisee pharisee, he was a sincere hardcore zealous disciple of who he thought was God. And then God came along and said, I gotta tweak this just a little. Right. OK. Now you're on the 0:55:03 - 0:55:27 right track. Keep going, same intensity as before or even more. So he, he conserved all the momentum. It's, it's, you could call it the law of conservation of spiritual momentum. It's impossible to love someone in a way that's wasted. Even if they waste it, it's not wasted. It can't be lost because that's 0:55:27 - 0:55:50 how good God is. It's like an investment that just keeps rolling forward, right? It just keeps rolling over and compounding and compounding. If you don't let go of him, you're just gonna keep going, at least as fast as you were before. Even if it seems like the direction changes, you just trust him and 0:55:50 - 0:56:21 you keep going, you hold on for your dear life and you just keep going. So don't fall into this trap and try to help others get out of it, cut the chains. So if you stay in a corrupt church, you're not gonna hear his word as often because the people who preach it to you are gonna get kicked out. But 0:56:21 - 0:56:38 also you're not gonna hear it directly from him as often or it's gonna be constrained in other ways. So he can't say all the things he was gonna say to you because you wouldn't listen because it's gonna nail those feelings that you refuse to feel that are caused by the false traditions. And you've been 0:56:37 - 0:56:59 programmed and you're not gonna do the things he tells you to do because you've been taught by your church that those are wrong, that those are bad things to do. Now, I don't need to be referring to something like Abraham killing Isaac or, uh, gosh, who was the prophet who was commanded to marry a prostitute 0:56:58 - 0:57:23 ? Is it my car anyway? I don't have to be referring to things like that, but yes, God commands us to do crazy things. Sometimes we can keep the conversation bounded too. Something like what if he told you to go to another church? Just one Sunday, go to this church instead, I know someone he told that 0:57:23 - 0:57:46 to and I fully believe it happened. What if He tells you to say something to um to another person, you know, like, like uh convey a revelation is what I'm saying to, to literally walk up to someone and say the Lord just told me to tell you this. So that person's probably gonna look at you like you, you've 0:57:46 - 0:58:06 got horns. But more than that, you're probably in a church that says that that's impossible that if God wanted to tell someone, someone, he'd do it through the leadership, right? And we could go on and on. But, but that's, you know, you get the gist, you're never going to be able to read the scriptures 0:58:05 - 0:58:27 and see something that outright contradicts what the church teaches is true. I it, it takes an immense amount of faith. So I shouldn't say never. But the likelihood of that happening is really low compared to where it would be if you were more open minded and had greater faith in God and more trust in 0:58:26 - 0:58:52 him and knew his voice better. So I said, they'll boot you out of the church. There's an interesting thing towards the end of the, the gospels where Jesus, he couldn't go to Jerusalem for the festival because they would kill him. They, they had made it very plain that they were seeking to kill him, not 0:58:51 - 0:59:11 everyone but enough people that that would have been a lethal decision. So he hung back and then he went secretly. Why? Because they would have killed him, right? It was, it was very obvious that they weren't in favor of what he was teaching. Did you notice how John the Baptist he preached in the wilderness 0:59:11 - 0:59:32 ? People had to come out of Jerusalem to come hear him? Why is that? The place he was teaching was very important. It's, it's where the Israelites came into Israel the first time. It's also where Elijah was taken up. That is a very important place. That's where he was preaching in the beginning. That's 0:59:32 - 0:59:57 where Jesus was baptized, which is also extremely important. So he called when he healed the blind man in John nine, the man born blind, he found the guy in Jerusalem. He was blind in Jerusalem. And he said, hey, go to this pool called One Cent. That was the name of the pool. One cent go to this pool 0:59:57 - 1:00:15 . He, he smeared a bunch of garbage in his eyes. That was from the street there in Jerusalem. He smeared in his eyes and then he said, go to that pool and wash your, wash your face and he did and then he was able to see it could have been the case that Jesus let him out there, you know, as a blind man 1:00:15 - 1:00:35 , he led him out there, but whatever the case was, the guy had to leave the city in order to, to be able to see. Do you think that that was just for funsies that Jesus had nothing better to do than make a blind man walk a mile or two or whatever it was. Of course not just like he didn't smear garbage 1:00:34 - 1:00:54 all over his eyes for no reason. This is the excrement and everything else. People just threw all the waste into the streets. It's a nasty thing. That's why it meant so much to wash someone's feet and he put it in the guy's eyes. Here's an interesting one that maybe you haven't thought about in Matthew 1:00:53 - 1:01:18 2314 when he's charging the Pharisees. Jesus includes this interesting one. He says, woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees hypocrites for ye devour widows houses. What would it mean to devour a widow's house? So no doubt there were Pharisees who were literally taking advantage of widows and rendering them 1:01:17 - 0:00:00 destitute. However, the symbolic meaning of this is more uh applicable in a, in a general sense, it applied to more people. The Israelites were in a state where everything they had of values spiritually had come in the past through men who are now dead. What's a widow's disposition in ancient times? 0:00:00 - 1:02:11 Anything she had would have been through a man from past times who is now dead. They're living out of that amount of money or those goods or that productive farmland or whatever it was maintenance mode, it was decaying, maintenance mode. And what Jesus was was, was saying was you're taking what little 1:02:11 - 1:02:42 these people have and you're taking even that away from them. It's a profound criticism. They got it. They understood exactly what he meant, but I haven't met anyone who has figured that out. So welcome to the party. Ok. So what is taught in these places? It's going to blind you from seeing more and 1:02:42 - 1:03:07 it's gonna make it even harder for you to do more or better than you would if you weren't saddled with those burdens of the false traditions and other things that we're gonna talk about. Part of the reason and part of, part of that burden is they literally saddle you not just with false traditions but 1:03:06 - 1:03:29 busy work churches in the world today. They're not about to do any of the things that actually matter that will result in you being a better person, however, they need to do something to keep your mind off the fact that you're not actually changing and they all take the same tech, which is to load up 1:03:29 - 1:03:52 your schedule with meaningless things that will never ever change you but will succeed in building a case that maybe you're not such a dirtbag. Do you see how that works? Now, if I talk through Matthew 23 we'll go into this in a lot more detail. But here's one of the references, they bind heavy burdens 1:03:52 - 1:04:15 and grieve us to be born and lay them on men's shoulders. Do you remember what the Pharisees did? They'd invent all these rules that were even more consuming than the law of Moses, which was already a burden. It would already occupy various points of every day of your life. And they added to this all 1:04:15 - 1:04:38 these ridiculous extra rules. So that basically to be faithful 24 7, someone had to be practicing religious rights and out of that exhaustion, they'd come away saying I must be righteous because I do all these things that consume my life in the name of the church, but they weren't actually better people 1:04:37 - 1:05:00 at all. Does this sound familiar? Does your church take your weeknights and all day on Sunday and every other time besides and, and tell you to go here and do this at all these different times and you better be doing this and that. When did your church last charge you to figure out something more about 1:05:00 - 1:05:23 Jesus than what you knew before and to do it or just to do what you already believe about him? When was the last time your church said, hey, straight up, we actually have to be like Jesus turns out, I guarantee you you've never heard that at church. And if you did it was by some person that was promptly 1:05:23 - 1:05:48 asked to not speak again or kicked out or maybe a whole team of 15 people got up and said how that's not true. Right after that, there's also a whole host of subtle barriers which play a prominent role. And this is just the subset, these are things like the social pressures. I mentioned what would this 1:05:48 - 1:06:11 mean about who I am if this or that were not true. There's a whole ton of pressure regarding spouses. There's a whole lot of husbands out there. Uh, I don't know why, but wives don't have as much of a hesitancy to deviate from their husbands religiously. I'm not sure why that is, but that's been my count 1:06:11 - 1:06:32 so far. But anyway, whether it's a husband or wife, there's a whole lot of spouses out there that are deathly afraid of practicing what they actually believe because they worry about what it would mean for their marriage. Then there's a whole set of people who are afraid, afraid of losing all their friends 1:06:32 - 1:06:55 if they were to actually practice what they believed. I didn't get into, you know, neighborhood if you happen to live in a place that's particularly religious. There are several of those around the country and then I also wanted to mention language and I, I think I already explain this enough for now 1:06:55 - 1:07:13 , but it really does constrain your thinking. This is not just some wild theory of mind, you can Google this. There, there are um researchers who have looked into the effect of language on thinking. Language is a two edged sword. It can call you into greater thoughts than you would have had without it 1:07:13 - 1:07:42 . But it also has to limit you to lesser thoughts than you could have beyond it. So enough about that. So here's my invitation to you. I'm quoting here from Isaiah 55 verse two. Wherefore do you spend money for that? Which is not bread and your labor for that which satisfies not hearken diligently unto 1:07:41 - 1:08:06 me. This is the Lord speaking and ee that which is good and let your soul delight itself in fatness. And this is my invitation to you. We began this presentation with a list of unanswered needs. I charged you to go and find what you lack. I want you to imagine the best possible things that you can imagine 1:08:06 - 1:08:45 no holds barred. I'm not talking about, you know, a specific aspect of life in any possible way you think about what would be the epitome of best and I promise you that the Lord is better than that. Go find him, come to him and find what you seek. Come join in air quotes his church by seeking and following 1:08:45 - 1:09:15 him in third Nephi 11. He said, and again, I say unto you, ye must repent and be baptized in my name and become as a little child or ye can in no wise inherit the kingdom of God. Verily, verily, I say unto you that this is my doctrine and whoso build upon this, build upon my rock and the gates of hell 1:09:15 - 1:09:38 shall not prevail against him and whoso shall declare more or less than this and establish it for my doctrine, the same cometh of evil and is not built upon my rock, but he goeth upon a sandy foundation and the gates of hell stand open to receive such when the floods come and the winds beat upon them 1:09:38 - 1:10:08 . There are several uh p several phrases in this passage that do not mean what you think they mean. You've, you've injected that meaning because of what your church has taught you. What does it mean to repent? It doesn't mean to say you're sorry for sinning. It means to cease sinning. It means to live 1:10:08 - 1:10:33 exactly as you understand, Jesus would in your place. What does it mean to be baptized in his name? It does not mean to be immersed in water. That's one of many commandments that he has given and it's the symbol of having done this thing, but it is not the thing. His name is not water. It's his character 1:10:32 - 1:11:03 to be baptized is to be immersed, to be immersed in the Lord's character is to take upon himself. Your name. It's to be clothed in the garment of light, which is to follow his example in all things at all times and in all places until you die. And even if it cost you your life, even if it costs you more 1:11:02 - 1:11:40 than life, if it leads you to a fate, worse than death, you still do everything he would. Because as it says in the Book of Revelation, you're one of his lambs and you follow him everywhere. And this is the only way to inherit the kingdom of God because it is the kingdom of God. There is nothing else 1:11:40 - 1:12:10 . There couldn't be anything better. What could possibly be better than the Lord his will is not a grand mystery that we have to imminently puzzle over. It's one and the same as who he is. The only mystery is learning more about him. You never ever again have to ask Lord, what's your will? What do you 1:12:10 - 1:12:39 want me to do? You only have to ask Lord, what would you do? And he will tell you every time he'll tell you because he'll show you what would be best. And he's given you a brain to think about that. And to ask the question what would be best and he doesn't do anything, save it, be for the benefit of 1:12:39 - 1:13:10 the world. All good comes from him. There's no good. There's nothing good. True, beautiful. Right. Useful. That doesn't come from him. If you dial into that signal and you, you follow it with all of your heart, mind and strength, it'll lead you right to him. So what does it mean to become as a little 1:13:09 - 1:13:49 child? Sorry before we get there, this is his doctrine. Anything less than this or more than this is of evil. Because anything that is not completely in and through and directed toward him, that is what evil is. And this is the rock. He is the rock and we literally have to build upon him by learning 1:13:48 - 1:14:21 everything we can about him and living everything we know. If you do that, you establish your house on his foundation and he said have peace because I have overcome the world and you can stare down any challenge in life, even death, even things worse than death as he did. He did both of those things 1:14:20 - 1:14:49 and you can overcome all things as he overcame all things by being like he is. That's how that is his authority, that is his power. It is not found outside of him. It exists on a gradient because even when you do everything you sincerely believe he would do and nothing else you still have a lot to learn 1:14:48 - 1:15:20 about how he is. But as you increase in how much of him, you know, and as you maintain complete fidelity to what you believe him to do in your place and I keep saying do but I mean, feel desire and do and say everything, every choice you make, you found it on the rock, you will inherit this promise that 1:15:20 - 1:16:04 even the depths of what hell can dish out, you will stand on that rock and no water and no wind will move. You just you will stand in the fire of God. Now, what does it mean to become as a little child? What does it mean to be like a child when Jesus took the little kid and he brought him into the midst 1:16:03 - 1:16:34 or into the middle of where they all were. And he said, be like this little child for of such is the kingdom of heaven. What did he mean? Well, in the ancient languages, little child was a synonym for servant. It's the same word. He was saying, you have to become my servant to be in my kingdom. And he 1:16:34 - 1:17:05 was saying how you do that? You become like one of his servants. This is a grand mystery, but it should be the plainest thing in the world. You become more like God by finding people who are more like God and becoming like them. And that's a cycle. You just keep going and this is what it means to be 1:17:05 - 1:17:40 grafted. Into the true vine. So you're not going to get that at one of the world's churches because they're not led by one of the, the Lord's servants in Ephesians. Two we read now, therefore, ye are no more strangers and foreigners but fellow citizens with the saints, fellow citizens of the Kingdom 1:17:40 - 1:18:16 of God and of the household of God. Do you know what a household is in, in scriptural terms? It's, it's not just a family quote unquote. It's a, it's, it's, it's the Lord's family. The Kingdom of God is the family of God. There are sons, there are fathers, there are daughters, there are wives and there 1:18:16 - 1:18:47 are a whole lot of servants verse 20 and are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone. You see there's a, there's a cornerstone and there are rocks on top of it in whom all the building fitly framed together, growth into an holy temple in 1:18:47 - 1:19:15 the Lord, in whom ye are, excuse me, in whom ye also are builded together for inhabitation of God through the spirit. Remember we become united in Christ by becoming more like him and as we ascend, we become more similar to others at that level and to those above and so we build a house or temple by 1:19:15 - 1:19:42 building on the foundation in Matthew seven. The Lord said, therefore, whosoever heareth these sayings of mine and doeth them. I will liken him unto a wise man which built his house upon a rock and the rain descended and the floods came and the winds blew and beat upon that house and it fell not for 1:19:42 - 1:20:05 , it was founded upon a rock and every one that heareth these sayings of mine and doeth them not shall be likened unto a foolish man which built his house upon the sand and the rain descended and the floods came and the winds blew and beat upon that house and it fell and great was the fall of it? Why 1:20:05 - 1:20:29 did the wise man build his house on the rock? Surely that took a lot more trouble than building it on the sand. Well, you know, rocks aren't easy to come by, are they? There's, there's, you have to find one. You can't just make it. So sand is all over the place because he knew that there was a storm 1:20:29 - 1:20:51 coming. And so it was worth all the extra trouble to build that house upon the rock because he wasn't building it just for the moment. He was building it for a long time. And if you want your house to stand for a long time, you need it to be on a foundation that will be stronger than anything you could 1:20:51 - 1:21:19 expect to come during that time. We live in a time where we still have a little time until the end of the end time. And as things progress in the end times, we are going to face greater and greater challenges. The list of unfulfilled needs that I began this presentation with whatever your current list 1:21:18 - 1:21:40 is. I promise you it's going to get longer and I promise you that the things you add to it will be more important than anything that's on it right now. As the consequences of reality are poured out upon our generation, you are going to find that you need what you lack a lot more than you think and you 1:21:40 - 1:22:07 need a lot more than you think because you lack a lot more than you think. And so it behooves you to search out the rock, which is Jesus Christ and to get to know him better than you know him because the rains are coming. Paul said, we must each be careful how we build because Christ is the only foundation 1:22:06 - 1:22:38 , the only true foundation. Anyway, going back to the previous passage, building your house upon the sand is making your religion about one of these uh churches instead of the real church, which is the rock, which is Jesus. So you could have churches established like we mentioned from Mosiah that our 1:22:38 - 1:23:06 vehicles for helping people become more like Jesus that are the best vehicle available to that person. Otherwise they shouldn't be there. However, the churches that exist right now, the formal established churches, they don't do that. They are sandy foundations. They're limiting you to the, the trifling 1:23:05 - 1:23:28 things that they occupy and it's insufficient for the storms that are coming back to Paul because Christ is the only foundation, whatever we build on, that foundation will be tested by fire on the day of judgment. Then everyone will find out if we have used gold, silver and precious stones or wood, hay 1:23:27 - 1:23:53 and straw case. It's not obvious. The first set of things aren't flammable but they're also way more expensive. Verse 14, we will be rewarded if our building is left standing. But if it is destroyed by the fire, we lose everything yet we ourselves will be saved like someone escaping from flames. All 1:23:53 - 1:24:17 of you surely know that you are God's temple and that His spirit lives in you together, you are God's holy temple and God will destroy anyone who destroys his temple. So it's not gonna go well for the wolves in sheep's clothing or for the sheep in shepherd's clothing. Either way you need a real shepherd 1:24:16 - 1:24:43 . Nothing less will do. And you actually have to become God's real temple by becoming better than you are by becoming as you believe Him to be. And then He will lead you along into his fold and teach you more about how he is. So how do you fix this? If you find yourself in a situation where your temple 1:24:43 - 1:25:07 is not as Paul described, or if you find that your building is built on something other than the rock, you take out the fake stones and you might say, well, well, what if it goes all the way down? What if I just keep going down and I never find the bedrock. Well, do you remember what Jesus said in Matthew 1:25:06 - 1:25:32 24? And Jesus went out and departed from the temple and his disciples came to him for to show him the buildings of the temple. And Jesus said unto them, see, not all these things verily, I say unto you, there shall not be left here, one stone upon another that shall not be thrown down. So if the Lord 1:25:32 - 1:26:00 saw fit to tear down the temple, the magnificent edifice that he was shown here that was not built upon his rock. Mm Don't you think it's appropriate to pull out the stones from your edifice that don't align with him? And even if you have to go all the way down, makes it really easy to jump on to the 1:25:59 - 1:26:25 , the foundation, doesn't it? If you've got no stones to carry there, one of the saddest things about established religions is that they've all got something that's worth something otherwise no one would, would find them attractive. The error isn't in what they have that's good. The problem is that they 1:26:25 - 1:26:55 cling to everything that's not good and that they resist what is better. If all the religions of the world were willing to strip down their camels so that they could fit through the eye of the needle, then they would all coalesce as they move up towards what is more like Christ. So to go through this 1:26:55 - 1:27:21 process, you need to identify and cast away everything in your life, not just at your church that impedes you from living more like God as you understand Him to be and learning more about Him than you do. You need to search out and draw nearer to all the beliefs, feelings, actions, situations, and people 1:27:20 - 1:28:00 that demonstrate more of what God is like. And that's how you do this. Now, this passage we quoted from Matthew 24. It's also a a valid example of how you can handle yourself in these church situations. Jesus was taken through the temple complex through people who thought he was their friend, who happened 1:28:00 - 1:28:17 to have something to do with running the place his disciples came to him for to show him the buildings of the temple. Now, I suppose maybe it's a conjecture on my part to say that they had something to do with running it, but at least they knew a lot about it. These were at least people who had spent 1:28:17 - 1:28:42 a lot of time there in the temple and they came to basically brag to Jesus about how fancy the place was and his response was, this is all worthless and it's all going to be taken. This is the other charge he was charged with for which he was crucified, he spoke against the temple. So his two charges 1:28:41 - 1:29:06 were if I remember correctly, they said it was blasphemy for him to say that he could be like the father. When actually that was the most glorious thing he could preach to anyone. Because if a man could be like the father, there's hope for all of us and he lived a mortal life subject to at least all 1:29:05 - 1:29:30 the temptations we face. Second. He said your most prized religious possession is actually not worth much to God and it's all gonna be taken away. That is one of the most valuable things he possibly could have said to them. Now, I I don't really want to get into it, but there's a purpose to temples and 1:29:29 - 1:29:57 it has to do with the appearance, the pre preparation for the appearance of a person of a heavenly messenger who couldn't come without those preparations taking place. Jesus came to the temple, literally, he came and he came as a man because the people couldn't come into the holy of Holies to see him 1:29:57 - 1:30:19 quote unquote as a God. Only the high priest once a year covered in a veil of smoke. And it's an open question whether the Lord's glory was even there at that point that late in the game because of the apostasy. But Jesus came as a man and he was rejected. He was most rejected by the people who had the 1:30:19 - 1:30:46 most to do with the temple. So that goes to show you how reversed everything had gone. And he said all this is gonna be taken away because it's way off base and that's what they killed him for moving on anyway. That, that's an example of how you can handle the church stuff because you don't have to go 1:30:46 - 1:31:09 down in flames, so to speak. You know, maybe the Lord's telling you to do something that's, that's going to be highly visible. Maybe the Lord tells you to just say I'm not going anymore. And if anyone asks you, you tell them why. But odds are, there's a really big middle ground there where you go and 1:31:09 - 1:31:26 you just say from now on, I will not hold back what I really think. And I'm not gonna assault people with it. But if I'm in Sunday school and someone says something and I know it's not true, I'm gonna raise my hand and maybe they won't call on me. But if they do, I'm going to give the, uh, most persuasive 1:31:25 - 1:31:50 argument I can to show other people that what I'm saying is right and promptly you'll be asked to stop talking or they'll stop calling on you or maybe worse. Or maybe you're, you're asked to, to say something, give a little talk or something. And, um, you know, you don't go out of your way to list all 1:31:49 - 1:32:12 the sins of your organized religion, but you do speak on the topic and you don't hold back the things that normally people are afraid to cross the line on and you say I'm going to construct this with the sole intent of demonstrating the name of Jesus. I will, I will arrange all of my actions and words 1:32:11 - 1:32:40 so that I'm doing the best I know to share how Jesus really is to the extent of my understanding, that's what you need to do and you won't last long and if you do last long, great, keep shining your light, buddy. Keep doing what you're doing. OK. So now I wanna read a passage from First Peter two and 1:32:40 - 1:33:00 we're almost done here. Peter speaks of a chosen generation and we see the continuation of this theme of temples, stones, foundations, quality of building materials and more than anything else being a demonstration of the Lord Jesus Christ, seeking a demonstration and emulating a demonstration, thereby 1:33:00 - 1:33:26 providing one. He says, ye also as living stones are built up a spiritual house in holy priesthood to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God by Jesus Christ. Where for also it is contained in the scripture. Behold, I lay in scion, a chief cornerstone elect precious and he that believeth on him 1:33:25 - 1:33:58 shall not be confounded. This is a great point. Peter just freely interchanges the idea of being built upon and believing and living as you cannot believe in Jesus without making any change. You need to, to become more like Him. Those two things are completely coupled and anyone that says, they believe 1:33:57 - 1:34:23 in Jesus who doesn't live like he would as they understand him to be, doesn't actually believe in him. That's what it means. Verse seven. Unto therefore, which believe he is precious but unto them, which be disobedient. You see that free association he makes unto them which be disobedient. The stone 1:34:23 - 1:34:47 which the builders disallowed. The same is made the head of the corner who are the builders. They were the chief priests, the Pharisees, the religious elite verse eight and a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense. Even to them, which stumble at the word being disobedient. Whereunto also they were 1:34:47 - 1:35:10 appointed. So these were the people who were supposed, supposed to, more than anyone else recognize that cornerstone and instead they disallowed it. They said, Nope doesn't belong here, cast it away. They actively tried to murder Jesus and they succeeded. And in doing so, instead of becoming foundation 1:35:09 - 1:35:35 , he became a stone of stumbling or rock of a fence. They stumbled at the word. The word is his demonstration. It's his character. But Peter says, but you're a chosen generation, a royal priesthood and holy nation, a peculiar people that ye should show forth the praises of him who hath called you out 1:35:34 - 1:35:56 of darkness into his marvelous light. You see the calling out. So here we have all the themes we've talked about today. Now, I've crossed out praises if you're, if you're looking at this and the reason is that's a pretty terrible translation of the King James, the new King James corrects us. But like 1:35:56 - 1:36:24 most translations, I think it says Excellencies, which is also bad. Now, this is an example of translators being cowards. Remember I said before, um churches will make Jesus out to be less than he actually is. Here's an example, the translators use the word Excellencies, which is technically possible 1:36:23 - 1:36:43 . However, it is not the best word by a long shot and it's really obvious just by looking at the context, you don't even have to read anything else in the scriptures. But if you know anything about the scriptures, it's really obvious. If you know anything about Jesus, it's even more obvious he didn't 1:36:43 - 1:37:13 create us to praise him in the sense that uh some evangelical church would understand the word. He didn't create us to tell other people about how good he is as pretty much every church would claim he created us to become like him. He came as the example of the father. And we are called to be the example 1:37:12 - 1:37:41 of him. That is your calling. That is incidentally actually what the priesthood is. And that is a grand key that will bulldoze a mountain of false tradition in your life. If you happen to hold the beliefs about it, that I imagine a lot of you do. So I'll reread it with a better word which is virtue inserted 1:37:40 - 1:38:03 for praises and think about what the rest of the verse says. But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood and holy nation, a peculiar people that ye should show forth the virtue of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. And how are you meant to show it by being that way 1:38:03 - 1:38:33 you're supposed to live? So that, and I don't know that there's could ever be a higher calling so that as people get to know you, they actually have a better understanding of how Jesus is now as ridiculous as that sounds, as beyond us as that sounds. Isn't that what Jesus himself did? He came here as 1:38:33 - 1:38:57 a man. And he said, I've come down from heaven to show you what the father's like because you don't know him yet, but you can know me and as you get to know me, I am the way, you know the way because you know me, what a high calling this is, we could go through, I need to move on, but we could go through 1:38:57 - 1:39:16 each of these words like holy peculiar chosen. What does it mean to be chosen? What does it mean to be royal? How do you become a king in God's kingdom when you have to become a son? That's how you become an heir. What does it mean to be a sun in an air? It means to be like needs to be just like him 1:39:16 - 1:39:39 . They're one and the same. There's no magic permission slips in the kingdom. Of God, your throne is your righteousness, righteousness means similarity to God. Period. That's what it means. Do you see? So all these grand mysteries that we've laid up for ourselves? Like, uh what's that track and field 1:39:39 - 1:40:03 event? Like a bunch of hurdles just covering the entire track? When, when God lays these things out, he just, he takes all the hurdles away and he gives you a motorbike. He says, hey man, floor it. It's, it's really straightforward. It's not easy, but it's not confusing. And then you see, he just unlocks 1:40:02 - 1:40:30 it all and it's just as plain as day. So last two slides, I wanna invite you to actually become more like Jesus. If you can do this in your church by all means, do it, I promise you it will lead you out of your church and into something better. But if you think you've found a way, then go for it, but 1:40:30 - 1:40:55 hold nothing back, hold nothing back actually become more like him actually become like him. Ephesians four. He gave some apostles and some prophets and some evangelists and some pastors and teachers. What was the purpose for the perfecting of the saints? That is one and the same is becoming more like 1:40:55 - 1:41:16 Jesus. There, there's no separate track. Jesus didn't say I'm the way, but there's also this other way. It's a lot easier and you have to do a lot less. You have to be a lot less, but it's all the same. Why you know what's verse back to verse 12 for the work of the ministry for the edifying of the body 1:41:16 - 1:41:42 of Christ. So this is edifying of the body of Christ. The first edification is you. That's such a crazy word. Look at, look at it, look it up. Edification. Edifice is a building to edifice, to build, to construct, to make stronger. You're the first edification and then as you become more edified, you 1:41:42 - 1:42:13 turn and you edify others. Jesus said, love others as I have loved you. He said, the world will, he said, the world will know you like me because you will love people like I do. That's what it means to be his disciple. It means to be disciplined after his order. And that's another great mystery. What 1:42:13 - 1:42:41 does it mean to be after the order of the Son of God? It means to be like Him. It means to show other people how he is through how you are. And that is the work of the ministry to become more like him and to show others how he is and to help them become more like Him too. Verse 13. Till we all come in 1:42:41 - 1:43:06 the unity of the faith. What's that? Well as you draw nearer to God, you come together under his name and in his name and of the knowledge of the Son of God because you're learning more about Him with every step unto a perfect man because that's who Jesus is. He is the perfect man unto the measure of 1:43:06 - 1:43:29 the stature of the fullness of Christ. That's what we move towards F-14 that we henceforth be no more Children tossed to and fro this is not the good kind of Children, the servant kind. This is the ignorant kind of Children who don't know anything about anything and who want all sorts of crazy, terrible 1:43:29 - 1:43:51 things tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine by the slight of men and cunning, craftiness whereby they lie in, wait to deceive. But speaking, the truth in love may grow up into him in all things, which is the head even Christ. And I've mentioned this before. But speaking in 1:43:50 - 1:44:20 the ancient languages, that doesn't just mean talking, speaking the truth is living the truth in love. Why? Because love is to sacrifice yourself for the benefit of others. And the greatest sacrifice you can make is to learn and live the truth so that they might know the truth. Jesus prayed to the father 1:44:19 - 1:44:48 in John 17. He said, sanctify them in the truth by the word. The word was his demonstration. It's how he is. He kept his disciples in the word by showing them what the father was like and by helping them to be like that themselves. 16 from whom the whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that 1:44:47 - 1:45:07 which every joint supplies according to the effectual working in the measure of every part maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself and love, which is a fancy way of saying that we're all in this big network where we all understand God a little differently, less differently as we ascend 1:45:06 - 1:45:31 . But nevertheless, we're all a little different, at least a little. But as all of us do exactly what we believe Jesus would do in our place. We move forward the purposes of God. We all work together and we all ascend together. 17. This I say therefore in testify in the Lord that ye henceforth walk not 1:45:30 - 1:45:54 as other gentiles walk in the vanity of their mind, having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them because of the blindness of their heart. Now, this is again, this is Paul speak, you know, Paul was an absolutely clear speaker, just profoundly 1:45:53 - 1:46:22 persuasive and clear in the Greek or in the Hebrew, whatever language you happen to be speaking or writing. He was extremely eloquent and articulate. But we garble this up into English. It's like putting a beautiful person in a, in a big potato sack and then smashing them with a sledgehammer and dumping 1:46:21 - 1:46:42 out what remains. And that's what we've got in the English translations of Paul. But nevertheless, you could piece it all together and Frankenstein it and uh what he's saying here, he's referring to a couple of gospel principles, which is that when you live the the gospel, you actually have to live like 1:46:42 - 1:47:08 the Lord, not as the gentiles walk in the vanity of their mind or in other words, according to desires that are based on all sorts of ignorance about how things really are and, and uh which can only lead to disappointment. So their, their, their desires will be frustrated because they're not living according 1:47:08 - 1:47:32 to the truth and they're not desiring according to the truth. And when you live in open opposition to that, which you already see and know you will have your understanding darkened or your ability to see reality will diminish. It's not just a, a moral understanding of right and wrong that diminishes 1:47:31 - 1:47:54 , it's everything you will actually become dumber and the reverse is true, which gives us all hope. You cannot draw nearer to God without being enlightened. It's called quickening, isn't it? And so you'll become smarter, you'll become stronger, you'll become more capable of seeing and believing and doing 1:47:53 - 1:48:20 . But they're alienated from the life of God or the eternal life that God provides the way of life that He is. Because they willingly turn away from that, which they know their blindness of heart. They refuse to desire what they believe to be good, not what I believe, to be good, not what you believe 1:48:20 - 1:48:40 , to be good, but their own belief of what is good. They will turn away from that. That's the, the lifeline that God has given us all what is good, true, beautiful, worthy. We all have a sense of that. We all have a model of that and the model improves as you live according to it. But if you turn away 1:48:39 - 1:49:04 from it, it'll get worse. And that's what it means to be, to turn yourself over to lasciviousness, to give yourself to something less than what you could be. Your potential to turn away from it at will. And that makes you past feeling because it dulls your feelings. If you draw closer to God, you'll 1:49:03 - 1:49:35 feel a deeper love than you've ever felt. You'll feel greater joy, you'll feel greater sorrow, but you'll be given greater meaning. Turning away from all of that. That's the opposite of learning Christ. So you have to put all these things away and recognize those desires as corrupt as deceitful, as lustful 1:49:35 - 1:50:03 and set aside everything that can't ascend with you towards God. And that's how you prepare yourself to receive that, that good that can only come from above. That's how you become a new man. You become a man more like Christ or a woman, more like Christ. And it's the weirdest thing because as you set 1:50:03 - 1:50:25 aside more of who you thought you were and what you thought you had, you receive more of who he is and what he has and yet all along the way with every single step you feel for the first time, like you're really yourself you feel more like yourself than you've ever felt before. And you know, yourself 1:50:24 - 1:51:04 better than you ever knew before. You lose yourself. And you find yourself in the self that you find is in his likeness. And when he literally comes to you, you see his countenance in you and you see your countenance in him. And when he appears, you are like him and you're one in him and he is one in 1:51:04 - 1:51:55 you because through everything that He has given you over time, you have put on the new man, the perfect man Christ and God has recreated you in his image in righteousness and true holiness. And that's what church is supposed to be wrapping all this up. Please see this for what it is. I know that everyone 1:51:54 - 1:52:22 who goes to church, they find some value in it. There's a reason they do it. I'm not trying to take that away from you. What I am doing is I'm expressing to you the need and the opportunity to actually become more like Jesus Romans 13 says in that knowing the time that now it is high time to wake out 1:52:22 - 1:52:52 of sleep for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed. The night is far spent. The day is at hand. Let us therefore, cast off the works of darkness. Let us put on the armor of light. Let us walk honestly as in the day, not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in 1:52:52 - 1:53:22 strife and envying, but put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ and make not provision for the flesh to fulfill the lust thereof. Turn to Jesus with all of your heart, mind and strength, turn away from the provision for the flesh and he will provision you with his spirit and he will continue to flow that in 0:00:00 - 0:00:21 A can on the maybe not so apparent downsides of continuing church attendance. And I will be specific about what I mean by church. Uh because obviously it's, it's a word that means different things to different people. But the message I wanna share with you today is that above all else, our motives ought 0:00:21 - 0:00:46 to be to learn more about Jesus and to live more like him. And so to the extent that anything impedes that anything we need to leave it behind. So I, I meant to break this out into other slides, but um my hand is injured right now and so it's not very easy to type. So sorry about that. Um I want to help 0:00:46 - 0:01:06 you see that you are actually bombarded by invitations from the Lord to find something better than what you have. Now, the things that we're going to go over here in these sentences. I've used the word church, however, you can expand your application of these principles to anything in your life and it 0:01:06 - 0:01:31 will have the same effect to show you a path that draws you nearer to God, for example. Um If you have problems that your church cannot solve. That is a call from Jesus to you to find something better than your church. Now, almost everyone, this is as good a time as ever to address this point. Almost 0:01:30 - 0:01:54 everyone in a church would say my church is the Lord's church. What happens is, is we take that position and we push against it. We live into it, we live according to it. The Lord will respond with signals that indicate that that is not the case. He will illustrate to us the deviation between what he 0:01:54 - 0:02:19 is and what he offers and what the church we attend claims but does not have. So if your church has problems or I'm sorry if you have problems that your church cannot solve. I'm not saying that the church has a solution and you won't apply it. And therefore you say it's the church's fault. And again 0:02:18 - 0:02:37 , all of this applies to much broader senses, right? Uh much broader applications. You you can't fault something. If you're not following the recipe, you can't say it's a terrible recipe because I don't like the way it tastes. But if you have problems that your church can't solve. Look at what the Lord 0:02:37 - 0:03:00 says in John 1633 he says these things I have spoken unto you that in me, you might have peace in the world, you shall have tribulation, but be of good cheer. I have overcome the world. I didn't explicitly say anxiety on this list. But that's another thing. If you find yourself with a lot of worry, worry 0:03:00 - 0:03:24 I do mention later, but he says, have peace in me. You can have peace because I have overcome the world. So if you have problems that your church can't solve, there is a gap between what Jesus is and what your church is and you cannot address that gap without leaving your church. What about apparent 0:03:24 - 0:03:44 contradictions that your church can't resolve almost every church will encourage you not to look into the cracks. However, that's where you're going to find more of God. If you find an uh an apparent contradiction and your church can't resolve it. Consider what the Lord says in Isaiah 118. He says, come 0:03:44 - 0:04:07 now let us reason together saith the Lord in um in James, I didn't quote this but he says, if any man lack wisdom, let him ask of God because He will not upbraid you upbraid is, is basically he's not going to attack you for asking him a question. He wants us to ask him questions. He wants us to know 0:04:07 - 0:04:27 there's another great scripture that I believe. It's also in James where he says, the Lord doesn't want us to be like dumb donkeys who are have to be led around by a bit in their mouth. He wants us to understand if you don't understand. Ask God if your church tells you not to ask God you're in the wrong 0:04:27 - 0:04:45 church, it's not the Lord's church. The Lord wants you to ask him. He wants you to know how can you know Jesus if you don't know what Jesus knows? Those two things are coupled together, the more you know what he knows, the more you will know him and the more you know him, the more of what he knows, you 0:04:45 - 0:05:08 will know. What about questions that your church can't answer. We mentioned that, that verse in James, but here's one from First Corinthians 41. This then is how you ought to regard us. This is Paul speaking and he's saying this is how you ought to regard the apostles as servants of Christ and as those 0:05:08 - 0:05:28 entrusted with the mysteries. God has revealed. Now, if you search the word mysteries in the New Testament, you actually find a whole lot of references from Paul about mysteries where he describes what he believed was his duty as an apostle, as a leader in the church of Christ to reveal mysteries. Now 0:05:28 - 0:05:53 , if your church leaders can't answer questions, if they're not revealing mysteries, then they, then you're discovering a gap between your church and God's church. What about needs that your church can't provide, that's a whole wide ranging basket, whatever you could imagine needs that your church can't 0:05:52 - 0:06:18 provide. The Lord said to the 70. When they returned from a mission, he sent them on. He said, when I sent you out without a purse bag or sandals, did you lack anything. They said no, not a thing. Luke 2235. If you are truly in the Lord's path, it's not to say you're gonna be overflowing with riches 0:06:17 - 0:06:48 , but you will have your needs met the Lord provisions for his servants. What about worries that your church can't diminish. You're riddled with concerns and anxieties. The Lord said peace, I leave with you my peace I give unto you. Not as the world giveth. Give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled 0:06:47 - 0:07:24 . Neither let it be afraid. John 1427. If you're worried, what's being revealed to you is the distance from where you are to where the Lord is because where he is, there's nothing but peace. What about if you have, if you feel weighed down by burdens, they're too heavy for you and beyond your church's 0:07:23 - 0:07:54 ability to support the Lord said, come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest. Matthew 1128. What if your heart cries out desire for good things that your church cannot lead you to? You, find yourself hungry and thirsting for blessings that your church can't provide desires 0:07:54 - 0:08:35 that your church can't fulfill whatever that might be. The Lord said hitherto, have you asked nothing in my name? Ask and you shall receive that? Your joy may be full. June 1624. What if you face challenges that your church can't give you the strength to overcome. The Lord said, I saw Satan fall like 0:08:34 - 0:09:05 lightning from heaven. Behold, I give you the authority to trample on serpents and scorpions and over all the power of the enemy and nothing shall by any means hurt you. Nevertheless, do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rather rejoice because your names are written in heaven 0:09:05 - 0:09:40 . Luke 10. No, there are many more examples, but we'll leave it at that suffice it to say, I know that the Lord provides. He provides what we seek. He provides what we need. You ought to pay attention to the things that you need and the things that you want because they are a call from God. They're a 0:09:40 - 0:10:17 trumpet. They're, they're an ensign, they're a map that show you the way to more and to better. And what is that way? I intentionally used this last verse that we quoted it is to find and take upon you the name of Christ as you take upon yourself. His name. Then your name will be written in heaven or 0:10:16 - 0:10:52 it will begin to be like the name written in heaven. What is the name in a scriptural sense? A name is the character. It's what makes an individual who they are. It's what defines them and distinguishes them. What is the name of Christ? It is everything about him that makes him Christ and the purpose 0:10:51 - 0:11:26 of a church is to learn that name and to take it upon you. However, when churches aren't done the way they're meant to be done, they can actually have the opposite effect. So modern churches are not like what I've described here and I'll describe more in a second instead of facilitating your understanding 0:11:26 - 0:11:57 of what Jesus is like and enabling you to be more like him, they impede you. There are many things that they will not let you seek, they will say don't desire that don't ask that. Don't look at that, don't read that, don't think about that. Don't do this, don't do that. And all of those instructions 0:11:56 - 0:12:16 have the potential of conflicting with what the Lord is telling you. For example, you might have a doctrinal question or maybe the Lord has told you something, you were reading the scriptures and you asked about a certain verse and he opened your mind to all these things that you've never thought about 0:12:16 - 0:12:35 and you just see tremendous value in it. If you take that to church and maybe you share it in a Sunday school lesson or something, they all shut you down. Maybe you get called aside and asked not to say that again, or maybe people just get angry at you. And it's really obvious. And so the message that 0:12:35 - 0:13:01 all this sends is when it comes to doctrine, the truth is what we say. It is. Well, that is antithetical to Christ. That is not the way he works we're all in this to find out more about the truth. And you don't do that by presuming you have it all already. You do it by, as Jesus said, taking the lower 0:13:01 - 0:13:24 seats, assuming you're a fool. But assuming that anything you think, you know, might be incorrect or incomplete in a church that doesn't have that woven deeply into its ethos that, that we're all in this to seek more about and from God, not in it to claim we already have it all. A church that doesn't 0:13:24 - 0:13:52 have that woven into its ethos is probably the wrong place to be. Another example we can think about is leadership. This is a very important topic. Essentially. What, what you'll have in today's churches is you'll have people at the pulpit who are either one or both of the following, uh who have one 0:13:52 - 0:14:19 or both of the following qualities. One, they'll say, hey, I'm just a normal person like you and we're all in this together. That's actually the better of the two and that egalitarian mindset. Um It, it, it allows for quite a bit of positive growth in everyone if we're just a couple of friends gathered 0:14:18 - 0:14:46 together, talking about Jesus and trying to figure out more about him. Well, we can learn an awful lot. There's a lot of truth that'll fit into that window. However, the rub comes when those churches adopt ideas or practices that contradict that statement. For example, suppose we're just a bunch of friends 0:14:45 - 0:15:03 getting together and, and the, the say, the pastor gets up in front of the church and all the time. He's just saying, I'm a sinner too. We're all sinners. We're just, there's a hospital for sinners and we're just trying to help people get better and give them a safe place to get better. But then the 0:15:03 - 0:15:28 pastor is the guy you go to when you need counsel about your life and you're, you're struggling to know what Jesus would do in your situation. How does that work? Or the priest or the bishop or whatever the title is the leader of the congregation um disciplines you in some way because you've done something 0:15:27 - 0:15:54 wrong and someone's, someone's uh pinched you and now they're in charge of dealing out the judgment. Didn't Jesus say let him who is without sin be the first to cast the stump. Now people misinterpret that to say that Jesus taught us that we should ignore faults and just pretend like everyone's perfect 0:15:54 - 0:16:27 and never judge anyone. That's not at all. What he said. A group of men had come with a woman taken in adultery and they were challenging him to stone her as the law commanded. He asked them if any of them were worthy to deal out that judgment because they were living in sin, was he he was not, he was 0:16:26 - 0:16:56 morally able to condemn that woman. No one else there was. Is it possible to live without sin after repenting. Yes, it is. So all those people who accused that woman that could have changed their hearts and repented of all their sins. And then if he had asked again, someone could say, well, I could throw 0:16:55 - 0:17:27 the stone if I wanted to because I'm not sinning, but a pastor that stands up and says, I'm just one of you. He has no moral ground and in fact, is sinning before God. If he judges the sins of anyone else in his congregation, he is morally incapable of that. And why does that matter? Because Jesus taught 0:17:27 - 0:17:48 that if you have a splinter in your eye, I'm sorry, a beam in your eye. Very large obstruction. You can't see the splinter in someone else. You can't see, you cannot judge the faults of another accurately while you are living in sin as a very important lesson. We could talk a lot more about that. But 0:17:48 - 0:00:00 we have to move on. The point is it's prevalent in churches today for leadership to play both sides of the coin to occupy two mutually exclusive positions, which of course you cannot do. And I mentioned there's another position here. I, I we started with the egalitarian mindset when it's convenient. 0:00:00 - 0:18:35 You know, when excusing their own sins, a church leader will say, oh, we're all sinners, we're all just trying, you know, but when it comes to them exercising authority upon their, their congregants, they'll say, well, I have authority over you do what I say, the flip side of that or sorry. The alternate 0:18:34 - 0:19:06 to that is when, when uh people say that their authority stems from something other than being more like Jesus, it doesn't matter what it is. Someone laid their hands on them. They have some uh pedigree of, of um ordinations or they went to some school and got a degree from someone, some institution 0:19:05 - 0:19:27 . It doesn't matter what it is. It doesn't even matter if they say God called me to this office. I had this spiritual experience. You know, if, if they pull in Isaiah and say I was taken up into heaven. He touched my lips with this coal, an angel did and God spoke to me and he called me to do this. Now 0:19:26 - 0:19:54 , all the stories I've heard of people getting called are probably less better than that. And still the question comes down to just one thing. Do you know Jesus more than the people you're serving, you're ministering to and do you actually live according to what? You know, that's it. So, in modern churches 0:19:54 - 0:20:21 , this is divorced and they say, well, authority is different than righteousness. That is an argument that Jesus never made. He said I know the father more than any of you and I am more like him than any of you. And that is my authority. He came down from heaven to demonstrate the one that none of us 0:20:21 - 0:20:51 had seen and that is his authority. So if your church is led by people who say, I'm just like you, I'm a sinner just like you. But who also have a church. You see, because there's a difference between a, a house meeting where it's just a bunch of friends and they, they have uh sodas and snacks. So must 0:20:50 - 0:21:12 have. And uh and they're all just sitting around talking about Jesus. That's wonderful. But that's not a church, is it? Nobody would call that a church. Now, I think that that's a lot better than any organized church. I know of. That's a lot better. That's a couple of humble people who recognize that 0:21:12 - 0:21:50 they are all lost sheep and they have no shepherd and a calling out to the good shepherd and Jesus said, wherever, there's a group of people who are gathered in my name, I will be there. And if they know how to take advantage of that promise, they'll be infinitely better off than anyone in any organized 0:21:49 - 0:22:24 church that doesn't follow that same principle of, of only taking it as far as likeness to God present justifies. So if Jesus appeared literally in their midst, they could not continue to treat that meeting the way they did up until that moment could they? And thus, it would be if a person were in their 0:22:24 - 0:22:54 midst who knew Jesus better than them and to the extent he was like him, they would have to react the same way. Do you get it? Finally? I want to spotlight this third problem with existing churches. This is not an exhaustive list. This is, these are highlights, this is how they shut down. Anyone who's 0:22:54 - 0:23:12 looking for something more and the attitude there is, we already have everything that anyone should want. If you have a question, please just shut up. If you're looking for greater blessings, you're doing something wrong, you're looking beyond the, the mark. Why can't you just be happy with what we have 0:23:12 - 0:23:42 ? We have everything you need. And they will say that because they are the Lord's church. You're seeking for anything more than what they have is you turning away from God, which is an absolutely absurd argument. Now, I've said this many times before, but I'm happy to, to hit redial whenever you hear 0:23:41 - 0:24:09 anything or practice anything about discovering greater truth. It's a very good process to back test this against the Lord's Mortal ministry. What do I mean by this? If, if you're gonna design a AAA prediction algorithm for the stock market, one of the things you're gonna do before you put any money 0:24:09 - 0:24:30 into it in real life is you're gonna obtain past market data from the stock market and you're going to pretend like those things haven't happened yet and you're gonna feed it through your program and if your program loses tons of money, you're not going to deploy it in the real world because your your 0:24:30 - 0:24:53 logical conclusion will be, it will lose money in the future. If it was going to lose money in the past, it would lose money in the future. That might not be true, but it's as true as you can get in under the circumstances. So the same goes with testing truth, whatever our practices are, if it would 0:24:53 - 0:25:19 have caused us to condemn the Lord in his mortal ministry, odds are, it's not a good technique. So if you get a church leader, for example, saying anyone who questions, what we say is an apostasy. Well, if you were a Jew in the time of Jesus, that practice would have condemned him because he preached 0:25:19 - 0:25:45 against what the the leadership was saying in doing openly, he preached against it. So this is another example that fails the test. This idea of if you're seeking for more, you're turning away from God. I already shared a bunch of scriptures about that, didn't I? He wants us to seek for what we want 0:25:45 - 0:26:08 . He wants us to ask him for more. If we want more, he wants us to, to accurately recognize the limitations of the good that we have. So we turn to him because he is the source of everything that matters and everything beyond what we have. How would he be upset with us for that? It's exactly what he 0:26:08 - 0:26:32 told us to do. But more than that, it's exactly what a loving father would want, especially one that has all things. OK. So what is a church? Let's let's uh go to jesus' definition of this. We could pull this from several sources, but this is the one I went with. This is an example of the Lord speaking 0:26:32 - 0:26:59 to a man anciently a righteous man. He says, thou art my servant in a covenant with thee that thou shalt have eternal life. Well, that seems pretty nice, doesn't it? And thou shalt serve me and go forth in my name and shalt gather together my sheep and he that will hear my voice shall be my sheep and 0:26:59 - 0:27:23 him shall ye receive into the church and him will I also receive for behold, this is my church and I put an ellipsis here. The stuff after the ellipsis is a new thought. It's not me trying to hide the real point of the verse. OK. This is from Mosiah 26 in the book Mormon. Now a little bit of back story 0:27:23 - 0:27:51 . This was a guy who had heard something about the gospel and lived it vividly and for a long time and the Lord came to him and said these things. Now, the model here is pretty clear. You live what you know about Jesus. He teaches you more. You live that too. You continue in this cycle until you have 0:27:51 - 0:28:29 developed a uh rich real relationship with the Lord. Not just figurative, not just emotionally but a real interactive, informational, intimate relationship with the Lord as one man speaks to another. And what happens is as anyone draws closer to the Lord and becomes more like him. And those two things 0:28:29 - 0:29:05 are synonymous, you can't separate them. That's what it means. As that happens, that person becomes capable of demonstrating more of the Lord to more people because he will know the Lord more than more people do make sense. And the duty incumbent upon all of us is not just to do this, but to realize 0:29:05 - 0:29:35 that in doing this, what we're doing is we're showing other people how he is. That's to go forth in his name and gather his sheep. It's to show the world how he is to the extent we know so far because we live constantly doing exactly what we believe he would in our place and nothing else. And how does 0:29:35 - 0:29:59 that gather sheep? Maybe it makes sense that that's what a shepherd would do because that's what the good shepherd does. And we're following his example when you gather his sheep because you unite people in Christ, you show them what he's like. And then as they choose, and if they choose to be more like 0:29:58 - 0:30:23 him, they become more similar. And it's not similar in the sense of here's a set of random people. We're just gonna average them. Everyone is drawing nearer to the example of the Lord through those who know him better, the demonstration of those who know him better. But whose voice is it? It's the Lord's 0:30:23 - 0:30:44 voice inasmuch as it accurately reflects the Lord. It's the Lord's voice. That's a gradient. Right. It's not all or nothing. It's another problem with modern churches. Everything's all or nothing. There's no, well, I learned this from him and maybe there's something better still. In fact, I can almost 0:30:44 - 0:31:04 guarantee it because he's everything and I'm nothing but I learned this particular thing and as far as what it's better than anyone who's entertaining, anything less than that could improve by coming up to this. And let's lay all of our cards on the table and go with the best that we've got. And then 0:31:04 - 0:31:40 let's keep seeking even better. And what he told this man in Mosiah 26 he explained that a church is a set of people who are doing all they can to become like a living example of what Jesus is like. So in the perfect frame that living example would be the Lord himself. But as we'll get to later, that's 0:31:39 - 0:32:02 something that we come up to. It's not where we start, which is another fault of modern churches is they pretend it's related to this all or nothing idea. They pretend that somehow you can teach someone what exactly what Jesus is like in just a short little process, maybe even a moment and maybe you 0:32:02 - 0:32:32 don't even ever have to talk about what Jesus is like, you just say the sinner's prayer and Shaam you know everything there is to know about him. So a church is a set of people that is emulating in a living example of Jesus Christ. That's what it is. That's the Lord's definition because the gospel is 0:32:31 - 0:32:59 to learn more about how Jesus is and to live everything you learn, that's it. Everything else is either just fulfilling that pattern or elaborating on that pattern. We'll get to some interesting scriptures there. So what does the world say? A church is if you go into any of these Christian churches so 0:32:59 - 0:33:19 called? And you say, well, what's a church? What are you gonna find? We're gonna find fantastic mission statements. They've got the best publicists in the world in some of these institutions, or at least the best paid coming up with wonderful sounding mission statements like things like it's the United 0:33:19 - 0:33:41 Body of believers in Christ and we're just trying to live like him. And uh what you'll find though is when you dig into how they bring that to pass, they're practicing something very different than what they're preaching by preaching something very different than they've claimed in their mission statement 0:33:40 - 0:34:10 . Now, there are many scriptures that discuss the errors of modern churches. Two of my favorite chapters are in Matthew 23 and second E 528. Um Maybe in another video, I will walk through Matthew 23. I can't do that right now for time limitations. But here's a summary, modern churches do not enable people 0:34:10 - 0:34:37 to be more like Jesus. Instead they prevent people from becoming more like Jesus. How well one, they omit the weightier matters. They don't actually teach what Jesus is like. It's an amazing thing. You can go to a church that says it's a Christian church and you can sit through a service and you can 0:34:37 - 0:35:07 get through the whole thing without any mention of anything about how Jesus is about some story from his life or some application of how we can live our lives more like him. So that's pretty amazing and sad. What else? They persuade people that he is less than he is? What do I mean by that? Because most 0:35:07 - 0:35:26 people attending organized churches would bristle at that one. They'd admit the first one hesitantly. They'd be like, yeah, sometimes we do that. But, but this one, they'd get a little mad at, they persuade people that Jesus is less than he actually is. What do I mean by that? By the way, that is the 0:35:26 - 0:35:50 definition of the word blasphemy. You might not know that I grew up in a um quasi religious environment like we were holiday Christian kind of people. But I, I thought the, the, the definition that I was taught about blasphemy is uh is something like, you know, saying certain cuss words or something 0:35:49 - 0:36:16 , I don't know. But the actual literal definition is to persuade people that God is less than he is. This is why Jesus got in big trouble. One of the charges he was crucified on was blasphemy. Um because he had quote made himself equal to God. And this was very, very backwards because it turns out that 0:36:16 - 0:36:50 , that um the most glorifying thing you can do a show how a sinner can be transformed by God into a saint. That's, that is glory, is that change, that delta God's glory is his power to draw people to Him, his power to help people become more like Him, not just help but but actually enable it. It is not 0:36:49 - 0:37:14 possible without it without him. Jesus said, no man can come to the father except he draw him or he actually he said, no man come to me except the father draw him. It's ST John. So how do modern churches persuade people that Jesus is less than He is? Well, they say things like you can't change or it's 0:37:14 - 0:37:57 ok to constantly be tempted by things. It's ok to still be a sinner. At least you're trying see their God doesn't have the power to pull people out of sin. My God is a mighty God. He is mighty to save. There is nothing he can't do. And I know that because I pushed hard against it in the life, cannot 0:37:57 - 0:38:28 produce a challenge that God cannot overcome. And there are many other examples of this, of how modern churches persuade people that God is less than He is. They, they teach that we can go to heaven and experience everything that anyone could ever experience there while being no different than we are 0:38:28 - 0:38:59 right now. Or that the change comes somehow by magic. But it's something that's, that's, uh, that's, uh, forced upon us. It's not something we choose. But what can you really believe that a religion that doesn't have power to change you right now will have the power to change you when you die. Why would 0:38:59 - 0:39:27 God hold off? Right. And if he can make you quote unquote holy just by doing some silly thing, some silly light thing like praying to him once or by going to church and checking off some ritual boxes because you did this or that? Well, wouldn't that be tremendously unfair to those who have not done that 0:39:27 - 0:39:50 ? If it, if the margin is really that narrow and all it takes is to get dunked in the water, you really think that that's a loving God because obviously conversion under that paradigm becomes no more than a magic trick. Why can't he just do that same magic trick to other people? Why would eternal joy 0:39:49 - 0:40:11 be withheld? Because someone didn't do some little arbitrary thing. It makes no sense. But you're not allowed to ask these questions in the churches of the world. The examples go on and on. But I will continue so that I do not modern churches teach and practice what prevents people from discovering how 0:40:10 - 0:40:56 he is Now, what is that all about in any organized church? You don't have to dig very far before you hit a boulder of some belief or some practice that they have that will forever prevent a person there from discovering and living some critical facet of the Lord's uh character. So as an example, suppose 0:40:56 - 0:41:24 you have a church that preaches that revelation comes primarily through feeling and that the Lord directs you into good things by making you feel good about them. And so praying to know the truth of something is asking God to make you feel good about it as you think about it. Now, if that isn't what 0:41:24 - 0:41:43 your church teaches, you probably think that's the most whacked out thing you've ever heard. But more than one church believes this firmly and preaches it actively. Now, what would be the effect of such a belief? Well, it turns out that when you think uh when you, when you believe something very strongly 0:41:43 - 0:42:07 and you live your life that way and you make sacrifices for it and then you're confronted with evidence that contradicts that position, you fall prey to a psychological condition called cognitive dissonance and one very strong pass it or aspect of this condition is you feel terrible emotionally, you 0:42:07 - 0:42:31 feel terrible. If it's, if it's a strong enough contradiction, you might even go through something called ego death. That's another psychological term. And that's, that's when a foundation of your self identity is removed through the observation of contradictory evidence that can't be denied. So something 0:42:30 - 0:42:50 you really, really, really thought was bedrock true is suddenly ripped out from you and it causes a lot of pain. A lot of anxiety, a lot of suffering. Well, if you've been taught your whole life that God only communicates in warm and fuzzy feelings, that's the strongest sign that whatever this thing 0:42:50 - 0:43:11 is, is from the devil that you could ever have. And so anything if you go through the, the entire body of scripture, and you made a list of every single situation that caused emotional grief, but it came from God and it was God directing people to something better. You'd come away with a list that's 0:43:11 - 0:43:38 basically as long as the scriptures. And if you believe that belief, you will be permanently cut off from God in all of those things and all of the things like those things. And so you will narrow your relationship with God to the tiniest little window that's completely insufficient to convey any recognizable 0:43:37 - 0:44:05 quantity of what has always been known as the gospel of Jesus Christ and the blessings there from, that's one teaching, that's just one teaching. So for any church, you could make a list of these things and you could call it beliefs and practices that permanently prevent anyone in this church from actually 0:44:04 - 0:44:32 knowing God. And it would be, you could make a compelling argument for those things lock tight. I listed some of these things about the L DS church in a book that I wrote, called Teaching for Doctrines and Commandments of Men tradition and modern Mormonism. Now, that wasn't the dismantling of Mormon 0:44:32 - 0:45:03 beliefs, that was a highlight of several, just a very small set of things that are really important that are really important and people got upset, ok, because organized religions, they don't allow you to improve very much. And this is a wonderful segue to the next thing because in publishing that book 0:45:02 - 0:45:29 and refusing to withdraw it. So I was, I was told by a church leader that I had two choices. I could withdraw the publication to be excommunicated. The charge, the charge was apostasy. And I said, please identify anything in this book that contradicts anything Jesus ever said or did. And he said that's 0:45:29 - 0:45:56 not the question. There's nothing in here that, that, that shows any kind of rebellion against God. The problem is that you criticized church leaders and you named names. I said, I don't consider this criticizing anyone. What I did was I showed that certain ideas that are held by many people in the L 0:45:55 - 0:46:25 DS church today contradict what the Lord has said about it in scripture. And I did the historical research to show where these beliefs began and how they started to um to demonstrate that they were not revelations from God. They began as someone's idea and they took on the, they grew legs in, into people 0:46:25 - 0:46:49 believing there were revelations from God, but there was never any revelation. And he said, no, that's criticizing church leaders. So you either pull the book or you're gonna get booted. And I said, well, I am happy to correct any error that I made anywhere in this book, however, I refuse to withdraw 0:46:48 - 0:47:19 it. And so I got booted. And this is the final point, churches today prevent people from becoming more like Jesus because they punish those who act more like Jesus. Now, Paul said, how can you learn the gospel without an example of the gospel? If an organization actively boots out anyone who somehow 0:47:18 - 0:47:41 manages to learn more about Jesus than the average person in that organization knows, then you will forever be limited to how much of Jesus you can encounter in that organization unless you become that person and then you won't last very long, right? So if you are still in an organization, it means one 0:47:41 - 0:48:06 of very few things, one, you're not very much like like God because if you were more like Him, you'd be booted out two. You are a little bit more like Him than those around you. And your time is, is short shortly at hand. Now, that won't be a mystery because people will really not like you, they're really 0:48:05 - 0:48:30 not like you. And they, the only reason will be because of your ideas about God because you are a better person than they are. So it's not just that you have some weird whacked out ideas about things, but you actually are more like Jesus. So you, you stand firmer on principle, you care more for other 0:48:29 - 0:00:00 people. You're more willing to say what's true that everyone knows, but no one wants to say you make greater sacrifices for what's right and for other people then they will and they don't like you because you make them feel bad about how they are even though that's not what you're what you're doing. 0:00:00 - 0:49:16 Let's move on. So, have you ever noticed how often in the New Testament? Jesus called people out. I don't mean call out like criticize, I mean, literally invited them to leave something. So it happens all the time. So he goes to the fisherman and, and he calls Peter and he says, leave all this behind 0:49:16 - 0:49:35 and come with me. He goes to the, the, the publican, he calls him as an apostle and he says, leave all this behind and follow me and they immediately leave it. They just leave. It's amazing. Um There are people he healed that he called to follow him and they did, he called a bunch of people and they 0:49:35 - 0:49:56 didn't come like the rich young ruler or the guy who said, I have to bury my father and he said, let the dead bury their dead. See, we could go on all day long with examples of Jesus calling people to leave Why did he do that? Why did he do that? That was almost always what he did. It wasn't some fringe 0:49:55 - 0:50:23 case, it was what he did. He went around calling people out all the time. The reason is because what you believe in the system, you're in the system you're in has a much stronger influence on your ability to hear the voice of the Lord. Then you think it's immense. So I mentioned that there was a period 0:50:23 - 0:50:44 of time as months between when I published the book, it might have been over a year. I don't remember I published this book and when I got excommunicated and obviously over that whole time, I harbored serious um deviations from the body of doctrine as believed in the L DS church. There were things that 0:50:44 - 0:51:08 I found very valuable and there were things that I found to be very much not true or, or a very little value, whatever the case might have been. And I thought that I had that all sorted out in my brain. It wasn't until I got excommunicated and I ceased going to church with every passing week. The Lord 0:51:07 - 0:51:36 increased what he was able. Well, not what he was, what he did teach me. I felt scales falling from my eyes and it amazed me being an intentional person trying to actively seek out what was better and thinking. I had figured out a few things, I guess knowing I'd figured out a few things I really was 0:51:35 - 0:52:01 surprised by just how much that environment continued to control my thoughts and feelings. So as an example of this, if you wanna see this in, in real time, whatever your religious flavor is, go to someone who's deep in it and you'll know of several sacred cows they have that are false traditions. Pick 0:52:00 - 0:52:26 one of them and uh take some time and come up with a really cogent, solid argument that contradicts it, share it with them and watch what the very first thing they say is because it's not going to be. Here's a solid rational argument for why, what you said isn't right. Instead, if you make a really rock 0:52:25 - 0:52:49 solid argument, their very first response is not gonna have anything to do with the validity of your argument. Instead their response will be something like. But what would that mean about? And they'll point to something that they believe they have because of their false belief that is of great value 0:52:49 - 0:53:09 to them and they'll basically what they'll say is what you're saying can't be true because it would mean this thing that I think I have, I don't actually have it or it's not worth what I thought it was one of those two things. Can you think of times that this happened in the scriptures? What happens 0:53:08 - 0:53:34 again and again and again, and we get to one, we'll get to one and it happens to be the other charge Jesus was crucified for. So how's that for underscoring how important it was? We are addressing the two charges that he was brought up on? He crucified for. OK. So that's an example of how false traditions 0:53:33 - 0:53:54 control your thoughts and your feelings because it takes the conversation out of the realm of is this true and into the realm of this doesn't feel good or what does this mean about this thing that I value or this thing that I thought I was, I knew a guy who had made lots of sacrifices for his religious 0:53:54 - 0:54:17 flavor and he was a really smart person and relatively informed. And when he got the little extra increment that made a lock tight case against some of the things he believed, he refused to believe it because he had made such great sacrifices for his religion, his church that he wasn't willing to bear 0:54:17 - 0:54:37 what that would, how that would revise the value of his sacrifices in his mind. Now, that was particularly sad because it, it just so happens that when you sincerely sacrifice for God, you can't go wrong. Even if you are wrong, you can't go wrong. What do I mean by that? Nothing's wasted. It just rolls 0:54:37 - 0:55:03 into a more correct target. So when, when Saul became Paul, he didn't lose what he had worked for his whole life as a pharisee pharisee, he was a sincere hardcore zealous disciple of who he thought was God. And then God came along and said, I gotta tweak this just a little. Right. OK. Now you're on the 0:55:03 - 0:55:27 right track. Keep going, same intensity as before or even more. So he, he conserved all the momentum. It's, it's, you could call it the law of conservation of spiritual momentum. It's impossible to love someone in a way that's wasted. Even if they waste it, it's not wasted. It can't be lost because that's 0:55:27 - 0:55:50 how good God is. It's like an investment that just keeps rolling forward, right? It just keeps rolling over and compounding and compounding. If you don't let go of him, you're just gonna keep going, at least as fast as you were before. Even if it seems like the direction changes, you just trust him and 0:55:50 - 0:56:21 you keep going, you hold on for your dear life and you just keep going. So don't fall into this trap and try to help others get out of it, cut the chains. So if you stay in a corrupt church, you're not gonna hear his word as often because the people who preach it to you are gonna get kicked out. But 0:56:21 - 0:56:38 also you're not gonna hear it directly from him as often or it's gonna be constrained in other ways. So he can't say all the things he was gonna say to you because you wouldn't listen because it's gonna nail those feelings that you refuse to feel that are caused by the false traditions. And you've been 0:56:37 - 0:56:59 programmed and you're not gonna do the things he tells you to do because you've been taught by your church that those are wrong, that those are bad things to do. Now, I don't need to be referring to something like Abraham killing Isaac or, uh, gosh, who was the prophet who was commanded to marry a prostitute 0:56:58 - 0:57:23 ? Is it my car anyway? I don't have to be referring to things like that, but yes, God commands us to do crazy things. Sometimes we can keep the conversation bounded too. Something like what if he told you to go to another church? Just one Sunday, go to this church instead, I know someone he told that 0:57:23 - 0:57:46 to and I fully believe it happened. What if He tells you to say something to um to another person, you know, like, like uh convey a revelation is what I'm saying to, to literally walk up to someone and say the Lord just told me to tell you this. So that person's probably gonna look at you like you, you've 0:57:46 - 0:58:06 got horns. But more than that, you're probably in a church that says that that's impossible that if God wanted to tell someone, someone, he'd do it through the leadership, right? And we could go on and on. But, but that's, you know, you get the gist, you're never going to be able to read the scriptures 0:58:05 - 0:58:27 and see something that outright contradicts what the church teaches is true. I it, it takes an immense amount of faith. So I shouldn't say never. But the likelihood of that happening is really low compared to where it would be if you were more open minded and had greater faith in God and more trust in 0:58:26 - 0:58:52 him and knew his voice better. So I said, they'll boot you out of the church. There's an interesting thing towards the end of the, the gospels where Jesus, he couldn't go to Jerusalem for the festival because they would kill him. They, they had made it very plain that they were seeking to kill him, not 0:58:51 - 0:59:11 everyone but enough people that that would have been a lethal decision. So he hung back and then he went secretly. Why? Because they would have killed him, right? It was, it was very obvious that they weren't in favor of what he was teaching. Did you notice how John the Baptist he preached in the wilderness 0:59:11 - 0:59:32 ? People had to come out of Jerusalem to come hear him? Why is that? The place he was teaching was very important. It's, it's where the Israelites came into Israel the first time. It's also where Elijah was taken up. That is a very important place. That's where he was preaching in the beginning. That's 0:59:32 - 0:59:57 where Jesus was baptized, which is also extremely important. So he called when he healed the blind man in John nine, the man born blind, he found the guy in Jerusalem. He was blind in Jerusalem. And he said, hey, go to this pool called One Cent. That was the name of the pool. One cent go to this pool 0:59:57 - 1:00:15 . He, he smeared a bunch of garbage in his eyes. That was from the street there in Jerusalem. He smeared in his eyes and then he said, go to that pool and wash your, wash your face and he did and then he was able to see it could have been the case that Jesus let him out there, you know, as a blind man 1:00:15 - 1:00:35 , he led him out there, but whatever the case was, the guy had to leave the city in order to, to be able to see. Do you think that that was just for funsies that Jesus had nothing better to do than make a blind man walk a mile or two or whatever it was. Of course not just like he didn't smear garbage 1:00:34 - 1:00:54 all over his eyes for no reason. This is the excrement and everything else. People just threw all the waste into the streets. It's a nasty thing. That's why it meant so much to wash someone's feet and he put it in the guy's eyes. Here's an interesting one that maybe you haven't thought about in Matthew 1:00:53 - 1:01:18 2314 when he's charging the Pharisees. Jesus includes this interesting one. He says, woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees hypocrites for ye devour widows houses. What would it mean to devour a widow's house? So no doubt there were Pharisees who were literally taking advantage of widows and rendering them 1:01:17 - 0:00:00 destitute. However, the symbolic meaning of this is more uh applicable in a, in a general sense, it applied to more people. The Israelites were in a state where everything they had of values spiritually had come in the past through men who are now dead. What's a widow's disposition in ancient times? 0:00:00 - 1:02:11 Anything she had would have been through a man from past times who is now dead. They're living out of that amount of money or those goods or that productive farmland or whatever it was maintenance mode, it was decaying, maintenance mode. And what Jesus was was, was saying was you're taking what little 1:02:11 - 1:02:42 these people have and you're taking even that away from them. It's a profound criticism. They got it. They understood exactly what he meant, but I haven't met anyone who has figured that out. So welcome to the party. Ok. So what is taught in these places? It's going to blind you from seeing more and 1:02:42 - 1:03:07 it's gonna make it even harder for you to do more or better than you would if you weren't saddled with those burdens of the false traditions and other things that we're gonna talk about. Part of the reason and part of, part of that burden is they literally saddle you not just with false traditions but 1:03:06 - 1:03:29 busy work churches in the world today. They're not about to do any of the things that actually matter that will result in you being a better person, however, they need to do something to keep your mind off the fact that you're not actually changing and they all take the same tech, which is to load up 1:03:29 - 1:03:52 your schedule with meaningless things that will never ever change you but will succeed in building a case that maybe you're not such a dirtbag. Do you see how that works? Now, if I talk through Matthew 23 we'll go into this in a lot more detail. But here's one of the references, they bind heavy burdens 1:03:52 - 1:04:15 and grieve us to be born and lay them on men's shoulders. Do you remember what the Pharisees did? They'd invent all these rules that were even more consuming than the law of Moses, which was already a burden. It would already occupy various points of every day of your life. And they added to this all 1:04:15 - 1:04:38 these ridiculous extra rules. So that basically to be faithful 24 7, someone had to be practicing religious rights and out of that exhaustion, they'd come away saying I must be righteous because I do all these things that consume my life in the name of the church, but they weren't actually better people 1:04:37 - 1:05:00 at all. Does this sound familiar? Does your church take your weeknights and all day on Sunday and every other time besides and, and tell you to go here and do this at all these different times and you better be doing this and that. When did your church last charge you to figure out something more about 1:05:00 - 1:05:23 Jesus than what you knew before and to do it or just to do what you already believe about him? When was the last time your church said, hey, straight up, we actually have to be like Jesus turns out, I guarantee you you've never heard that at church. And if you did it was by some person that was promptly 1:05:23 - 1:05:48 asked to not speak again or kicked out or maybe a whole team of 15 people got up and said how that's not true. Right after that, there's also a whole host of subtle barriers which play a prominent role. And this is just the subset, these are things like the social pressures. I mentioned what would this 1:05:48 - 1:06:11 mean about who I am if this or that were not true. There's a whole ton of pressure regarding spouses. There's a whole lot of husbands out there. Uh, I don't know why, but wives don't have as much of a hesitancy to deviate from their husbands religiously. I'm not sure why that is, but that's been my count 1:06:11 - 1:06:32 so far. But anyway, whether it's a husband or wife, there's a whole lot of spouses out there that are deathly afraid of practicing what they actually believe because they worry about what it would mean for their marriage. Then there's a whole set of people who are afraid, afraid of losing all their friends 1:06:32 - 1:06:55 if they were to actually practice what they believed. I didn't get into, you know, neighborhood if you happen to live in a place that's particularly religious. There are several of those around the country and then I also wanted to mention language and I, I think I already explain this enough for now 1:06:55 - 1:07:13 , but it really does constrain your thinking. This is not just some wild theory of mind, you can Google this. There, there are um researchers who have looked into the effect of language on thinking. Language is a two edged sword. It can call you into greater thoughts than you would have had without it 1:07:13 - 1:07:42 . But it also has to limit you to lesser thoughts than you could have beyond it. So enough about that. So here's my invitation to you. I'm quoting here from Isaiah 55 verse two. Wherefore do you spend money for that? Which is not bread and your labor for that which satisfies not hearken diligently unto 1:07:41 - 1:08:06 me. This is the Lord speaking and ee that which is good and let your soul delight itself in fatness. And this is my invitation to you. We began this presentation with a list of unanswered needs. I charged you to go and find what you lack. I want you to imagine the best possible things that you can imagine 1:08:06 - 1:08:45 no holds barred. I'm not talking about, you know, a specific aspect of life in any possible way you think about what would be the epitome of best and I promise you that the Lord is better than that. Go find him, come to him and find what you seek. Come join in air quotes his church by seeking and following 1:08:45 - 1:09:15 him in third Nephi 11. He said, and again, I say unto you, ye must repent and be baptized in my name and become as a little child or ye can in no wise inherit the kingdom of God. Verily, verily, I say unto you that this is my doctrine and whoso build upon this, build upon my rock and the gates of hell 1:09:15 - 1:09:38 shall not prevail against him and whoso shall declare more or less than this and establish it for my doctrine, the same cometh of evil and is not built upon my rock, but he goeth upon a sandy foundation and the gates of hell stand open to receive such when the floods come and the winds beat upon them 1:09:38 - 1:10:08 . There are several uh p several phrases in this passage that do not mean what you think they mean. You've, you've injected that meaning because of what your church has taught you. What does it mean to repent? It doesn't mean to say you're sorry for sinning. It means to cease sinning. It means to live 1:10:08 - 1:10:33 exactly as you understand, Jesus would in your place. What does it mean to be baptized in his name? It does not mean to be immersed in water. That's one of many commandments that he has given and it's the symbol of having done this thing, but it is not the thing. His name is not water. It's his character 1:10:32 - 1:11:03 to be baptized is to be immersed, to be immersed in the Lord's character is to take upon himself. Your name. It's to be clothed in the garment of light, which is to follow his example in all things at all times and in all places until you die. And even if it cost you your life, even if it costs you more 1:11:02 - 1:11:40 than life, if it leads you to a fate, worse than death, you still do everything he would. Because as it says in the Book of Revelation, you're one of his lambs and you follow him everywhere. And this is the only way to inherit the kingdom of God because it is the kingdom of God. There is nothing else 1:11:40 - 1:12:10 . There couldn't be anything better. What could possibly be better than the Lord his will is not a grand mystery that we have to imminently puzzle over. It's one and the same as who he is. The only mystery is learning more about him. You never ever again have to ask Lord, what's your will? What do you 1:12:10 - 1:12:39 want me to do? You only have to ask Lord, what would you do? And he will tell you every time he'll tell you because he'll show you what would be best. And he's given you a brain to think about that. And to ask the question what would be best and he doesn't do anything, save it, be for the benefit of 1:12:39 - 1:13:10 the world. All good comes from him. There's no good. There's nothing good. True, beautiful. Right. Useful. That doesn't come from him. If you dial into that signal and you, you follow it with all of your heart, mind and strength, it'll lead you right to him. So what does it mean to become as a little 1:13:09 - 1:13:49 child? Sorry before we get there, this is his doctrine. Anything less than this or more than this is of evil. Because anything that is not completely in and through and directed toward him, that is what evil is. And this is the rock. He is the rock and we literally have to build upon him by learning 1:13:48 - 1:14:21 everything we can about him and living everything we know. If you do that, you establish your house on his foundation and he said have peace because I have overcome the world and you can stare down any challenge in life, even death, even things worse than death as he did. He did both of those things 1:14:20 - 1:14:49 and you can overcome all things as he overcame all things by being like he is. That's how that is his authority, that is his power. It is not found outside of him. It exists on a gradient because even when you do everything you sincerely believe he would do and nothing else you still have a lot to learn 1:14:48 - 1:15:20 about how he is. But as you increase in how much of him, you know, and as you maintain complete fidelity to what you believe him to do in your place and I keep saying do but I mean, feel desire and do and say everything, every choice you make, you found it on the rock, you will inherit this promise that 1:15:20 - 1:16:04 even the depths of what hell can dish out, you will stand on that rock and no water and no wind will move. You just you will stand in the fire of God. Now, what does it mean to become as a little child? What does it mean to be like a child when Jesus took the little kid and he brought him into the midst 1:16:03 - 1:16:34 or into the middle of where they all were. And he said, be like this little child for of such is the kingdom of heaven. What did he mean? Well, in the ancient languages, little child was a synonym for servant. It's the same word. He was saying, you have to become my servant to be in my kingdom. And he 1:16:34 - 1:17:05 was saying how you do that? You become like one of his servants. This is a grand mystery, but it should be the plainest thing in the world. You become more like God by finding people who are more like God and becoming like them. And that's a cycle. You just keep going and this is what it means to be 1:17:05 - 1:17:40 grafted. Into the true vine. So you're not going to get that at one of the world's churches because they're not led by one of the, the Lord's servants in Ephesians. Two we read now, therefore, ye are no more strangers and foreigners but fellow citizens with the saints, fellow citizens of the Kingdom 1:17:40 - 1:18:16 of God and of the household of God. Do you know what a household is in, in scriptural terms? It's, it's not just a family quote unquote. It's a, it's, it's, it's the Lord's family. The Kingdom of God is the family of God. There are sons, there are fathers, there are daughters, there are wives and there 1:18:16 - 1:18:47 are a whole lot of servants verse 20 and are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone. You see there's a, there's a cornerstone and there are rocks on top of it in whom all the building fitly framed together, growth into an holy temple in 1:18:47 - 1:19:15 the Lord, in whom ye are, excuse me, in whom ye also are builded together for inhabitation of God through the spirit. Remember we become united in Christ by becoming more like him and as we ascend, we become more similar to others at that level and to those above and so we build a house or temple by 1:19:15 - 1:19:42 building on the foundation in Matthew seven. The Lord said, therefore, whosoever heareth these sayings of mine and doeth them. I will liken him unto a wise man which built his house upon a rock and the rain descended and the floods came and the winds blew and beat upon that house and it fell not for 1:19:42 - 1:20:05 , it was founded upon a rock and every one that heareth these sayings of mine and doeth them not shall be likened unto a foolish man which built his house upon the sand and the rain descended and the floods came and the winds blew and beat upon that house and it fell and great was the fall of it? Why 1:20:05 - 1:20:29 did the wise man build his house on the rock? Surely that took a lot more trouble than building it on the sand. Well, you know, rocks aren't easy to come by, are they? There's, there's, you have to find one. You can't just make it. So sand is all over the place because he knew that there was a storm 1:20:29 - 1:20:51 coming. And so it was worth all the extra trouble to build that house upon the rock because he wasn't building it just for the moment. He was building it for a long time. And if you want your house to stand for a long time, you need it to be on a foundation that will be stronger than anything you could 1:20:51 - 1:21:19 expect to come during that time. We live in a time where we still have a little time until the end of the end time. And as things progress in the end times, we are going to face greater and greater challenges. The list of unfulfilled needs that I began this presentation with whatever your current list 1:21:18 - 1:21:40 is. I promise you it's going to get longer and I promise you that the things you add to it will be more important than anything that's on it right now. As the consequences of reality are poured out upon our generation, you are going to find that you need what you lack a lot more than you think and you 1:21:40 - 1:22:07 need a lot more than you think because you lack a lot more than you think. And so it behooves you to search out the rock, which is Jesus Christ and to get to know him better than you know him because the rains are coming. Paul said, we must each be careful how we build because Christ is the only foundation 1:22:06 - 1:22:38 , the only true foundation. Anyway, going back to the previous passage, building your house upon the sand is making your religion about one of these uh churches instead of the real church, which is the rock, which is Jesus. So you could have churches established like we mentioned from Mosiah that our 1:22:38 - 1:23:06 vehicles for helping people become more like Jesus that are the best vehicle available to that person. Otherwise they shouldn't be there. However, the churches that exist right now, the formal established churches, they don't do that. They are sandy foundations. They're limiting you to the, the trifling 1:23:05 - 1:23:28 things that they occupy and it's insufficient for the storms that are coming back to Paul because Christ is the only foundation, whatever we build on, that foundation will be tested by fire on the day of judgment. Then everyone will find out if we have used gold, silver and precious stones or wood, hay 1:23:27 - 1:23:53 and straw case. It's not obvious. The first set of things aren't flammable but they're also way more expensive. Verse 14, we will be rewarded if our building is left standing. But if it is destroyed by the fire, we lose everything yet we ourselves will be saved like someone escaping from flames. All 1:23:53 - 1:24:17 of you surely know that you are God's temple and that His spirit lives in you together, you are God's holy temple and God will destroy anyone who destroys his temple. So it's not gonna go well for the wolves in sheep's clothing or for the sheep in shepherd's clothing. Either way you need a real shepherd 1:24:16 - 1:24:43 . Nothing less will do. And you actually have to become God's real temple by becoming better than you are by becoming as you believe Him to be. And then He will lead you along into his fold and teach you more about how he is. So how do you fix this? If you find yourself in a situation where your temple 1:24:43 - 1:25:07 is not as Paul described, or if you find that your building is built on something other than the rock, you take out the fake stones and you might say, well, well, what if it goes all the way down? What if I just keep going down and I never find the bedrock. Well, do you remember what Jesus said in Matthew 1:25:06 - 1:25:32 24? And Jesus went out and departed from the temple and his disciples came to him for to show him the buildings of the temple. And Jesus said unto them, see, not all these things verily, I say unto you, there shall not be left here, one stone upon another that shall not be thrown down. So if the Lord 1:25:32 - 1:26:00 saw fit to tear down the temple, the magnificent edifice that he was shown here that was not built upon his rock. Mm Don't you think it's appropriate to pull out the stones from your edifice that don't align with him? And even if you have to go all the way down, makes it really easy to jump on to the 1:25:59 - 1:26:25 , the foundation, doesn't it? If you've got no stones to carry there, one of the saddest things about established religions is that they've all got something that's worth something otherwise no one would, would find them attractive. The error isn't in what they have that's good. The problem is that they 1:26:25 - 1:26:55 cling to everything that's not good and that they resist what is better. If all the religions of the world were willing to strip down their camels so that they could fit through the eye of the needle, then they would all coalesce as they move up towards what is more like Christ. So to go through this 1:26:55 - 1:27:21 process, you need to identify and cast away everything in your life, not just at your church that impedes you from living more like God as you understand Him to be and learning more about Him than you do. You need to search out and draw nearer to all the beliefs, feelings, actions, situations, and people 1:27:20 - 1:28:00 that demonstrate more of what God is like. And that's how you do this. Now, this passage we quoted from Matthew 24. It's also a a valid example of how you can handle yourself in these church situations. Jesus was taken through the temple complex through people who thought he was their friend, who happened 1:28:00 - 1:28:17 to have something to do with running the place his disciples came to him for to show him the buildings of the temple. Now, I suppose maybe it's a conjecture on my part to say that they had something to do with running it, but at least they knew a lot about it. These were at least people who had spent 1:28:17 - 1:28:42 a lot of time there in the temple and they came to basically brag to Jesus about how fancy the place was and his response was, this is all worthless and it's all going to be taken. This is the other charge he was charged with for which he was crucified, he spoke against the temple. So his two charges 1:28:41 - 1:29:06 were if I remember correctly, they said it was blasphemy for him to say that he could be like the father. When actually that was the most glorious thing he could preach to anyone. Because if a man could be like the father, there's hope for all of us and he lived a mortal life subject to at least all 1:29:05 - 1:29:30 the temptations we face. Second. He said your most prized religious possession is actually not worth much to God and it's all gonna be taken away. That is one of the most valuable things he possibly could have said to them. Now, I I don't really want to get into it, but there's a purpose to temples and 1:29:29 - 1:29:57 it has to do with the appearance, the pre preparation for the appearance of a person of a heavenly messenger who couldn't come without those preparations taking place. Jesus came to the temple, literally, he came and he came as a man because the people couldn't come into the holy of Holies to see him 1:29:57 - 1:30:19 quote unquote as a God. Only the high priest once a year covered in a veil of smoke. And it's an open question whether the Lord's glory was even there at that point that late in the game because of the apostasy. But Jesus came as a man and he was rejected. He was most rejected by the people who had the 1:30:19 - 1:30:46 most to do with the temple. So that goes to show you how reversed everything had gone. And he said all this is gonna be taken away because it's way off base and that's what they killed him for moving on anyway. That, that's an example of how you can handle the church stuff because you don't have to go 1:30:46 - 1:31:09 down in flames, so to speak. You know, maybe the Lord's telling you to do something that's, that's going to be highly visible. Maybe the Lord tells you to just say I'm not going anymore. And if anyone asks you, you tell them why. But odds are, there's a really big middle ground there where you go and 1:31:09 - 1:31:26 you just say from now on, I will not hold back what I really think. And I'm not gonna assault people with it. But if I'm in Sunday school and someone says something and I know it's not true, I'm gonna raise my hand and maybe they won't call on me. But if they do, I'm going to give the, uh, most persuasive 1:31:25 - 1:31:50 argument I can to show other people that what I'm saying is right and promptly you'll be asked to stop talking or they'll stop calling on you or maybe worse. Or maybe you're, you're asked to, to say something, give a little talk or something. And, um, you know, you don't go out of your way to list all 1:31:49 - 1:32:12 the sins of your organized religion, but you do speak on the topic and you don't hold back the things that normally people are afraid to cross the line on and you say I'm going to construct this with the sole intent of demonstrating the name of Jesus. I will, I will arrange all of my actions and words 1:32:11 - 1:32:40 so that I'm doing the best I know to share how Jesus really is to the extent of my understanding, that's what you need to do and you won't last long and if you do last long, great, keep shining your light, buddy. Keep doing what you're doing. OK. So now I wanna read a passage from First Peter two and 1:32:40 - 1:33:00 we're almost done here. Peter speaks of a chosen generation and we see the continuation of this theme of temples, stones, foundations, quality of building materials and more than anything else being a demonstration of the Lord Jesus Christ, seeking a demonstration and emulating a demonstration, thereby 1:33:00 - 1:33:26 providing one. He says, ye also as living stones are built up a spiritual house in holy priesthood to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God by Jesus Christ. Where for also it is contained in the scripture. Behold, I lay in scion, a chief cornerstone elect precious and he that believeth on him 1:33:25 - 1:33:58 shall not be confounded. This is a great point. Peter just freely interchanges the idea of being built upon and believing and living as you cannot believe in Jesus without making any change. You need to, to become more like Him. Those two things are completely coupled and anyone that says, they believe 1:33:57 - 1:34:23 in Jesus who doesn't live like he would as they understand him to be, doesn't actually believe in him. That's what it means. Verse seven. Unto therefore, which believe he is precious but unto them, which be disobedient. You see that free association he makes unto them which be disobedient. The stone 1:34:23 - 1:34:47 which the builders disallowed. The same is made the head of the corner who are the builders. They were the chief priests, the Pharisees, the religious elite verse eight and a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense. Even to them, which stumble at the word being disobedient. Whereunto also they were 1:34:47 - 1:35:10 appointed. So these were the people who were supposed, supposed to, more than anyone else recognize that cornerstone and instead they disallowed it. They said, Nope doesn't belong here, cast it away. They actively tried to murder Jesus and they succeeded. And in doing so, instead of becoming foundation 1:35:09 - 1:35:35 , he became a stone of stumbling or rock of a fence. They stumbled at the word. The word is his demonstration. It's his character. But Peter says, but you're a chosen generation, a royal priesthood and holy nation, a peculiar people that ye should show forth the praises of him who hath called you out 1:35:34 - 1:35:56 of darkness into his marvelous light. You see the calling out. So here we have all the themes we've talked about today. Now, I've crossed out praises if you're, if you're looking at this and the reason is that's a pretty terrible translation of the King James, the new King James corrects us. But like 1:35:56 - 1:36:24 most translations, I think it says Excellencies, which is also bad. Now, this is an example of translators being cowards. Remember I said before, um churches will make Jesus out to be less than he actually is. Here's an example, the translators use the word Excellencies, which is technically possible 1:36:23 - 1:36:43 . However, it is not the best word by a long shot and it's really obvious just by looking at the context, you don't even have to read anything else in the scriptures. But if you know anything about the scriptures, it's really obvious. If you know anything about Jesus, it's even more obvious he didn't 1:36:43 - 1:37:13 create us to praise him in the sense that uh some evangelical church would understand the word. He didn't create us to tell other people about how good he is as pretty much every church would claim he created us to become like him. He came as the example of the father. And we are called to be the example 1:37:12 - 1:37:41 of him. That is your calling. That is incidentally actually what the priesthood is. And that is a grand key that will bulldoze a mountain of false tradition in your life. If you happen to hold the beliefs about it, that I imagine a lot of you do. So I'll reread it with a better word which is virtue inserted 1:37:40 - 1:38:03 for praises and think about what the rest of the verse says. But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood and holy nation, a peculiar people that ye should show forth the virtue of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. And how are you meant to show it by being that way 1:38:03 - 1:38:33 you're supposed to live? So that, and I don't know that there's could ever be a higher calling so that as people get to know you, they actually have a better understanding of how Jesus is now as ridiculous as that sounds, as beyond us as that sounds. Isn't that what Jesus himself did? He came here as 1:38:33 - 1:38:57 a man. And he said, I've come down from heaven to show you what the father's like because you don't know him yet, but you can know me and as you get to know me, I am the way, you know the way because you know me, what a high calling this is, we could go through, I need to move on, but we could go through 1:38:57 - 1:39:16 each of these words like holy peculiar chosen. What does it mean to be chosen? What does it mean to be royal? How do you become a king in God's kingdom when you have to become a son? That's how you become an heir. What does it mean to be a sun in an air? It means to be like needs to be just like him 1:39:16 - 1:39:39 . They're one and the same. There's no magic permission slips in the kingdom. Of God, your throne is your righteousness, righteousness means similarity to God. Period. That's what it means. Do you see? So all these grand mysteries that we've laid up for ourselves? Like, uh what's that track and field 1:39:39 - 1:40:03 event? Like a bunch of hurdles just covering the entire track? When, when God lays these things out, he just, he takes all the hurdles away and he gives you a motorbike. He says, hey man, floor it. It's, it's really straightforward. It's not easy, but it's not confusing. And then you see, he just unlocks 1:40:02 - 1:40:30 it all and it's just as plain as day. So last two slides, I wanna invite you to actually become more like Jesus. If you can do this in your church by all means, do it, I promise you it will lead you out of your church and into something better. But if you think you've found a way, then go for it, but 1:40:30 - 1:40:55 hold nothing back, hold nothing back actually become more like him actually become like him. Ephesians four. He gave some apostles and some prophets and some evangelists and some pastors and teachers. What was the purpose for the perfecting of the saints? That is one and the same is becoming more like 1:40:55 - 1:41:16 Jesus. There, there's no separate track. Jesus didn't say I'm the way, but there's also this other way. It's a lot easier and you have to do a lot less. You have to be a lot less, but it's all the same. Why you know what's verse back to verse 12 for the work of the ministry for the edifying of the body 1:41:16 - 1:41:42 of Christ. So this is edifying of the body of Christ. The first edification is you. That's such a crazy word. Look at, look at it, look it up. Edification. Edifice is a building to edifice, to build, to construct, to make stronger. You're the first edification and then as you become more edified, you 1:41:42 - 1:42:13 turn and you edify others. Jesus said, love others as I have loved you. He said, the world will, he said, the world will know you like me because you will love people like I do. That's what it means to be his disciple. It means to be disciplined after his order. And that's another great mystery. What 1:42:13 - 1:42:41 does it mean to be after the order of the Son of God? It means to be like Him. It means to show other people how he is through how you are. And that is the work of the ministry to become more like him and to show others how he is and to help them become more like Him too. Verse 13. Till we all come in 1:42:41 - 1:43:06 the unity of the faith. What's that? Well as you draw nearer to God, you come together under his name and in his name and of the knowledge of the Son of God because you're learning more about Him with every step unto a perfect man because that's who Jesus is. He is the perfect man unto the measure of 1:43:06 - 1:43:29 the stature of the fullness of Christ. That's what we move towards F-14 that we henceforth be no more Children tossed to and fro this is not the good kind of Children, the servant kind. This is the ignorant kind of Children who don't know anything about anything and who want all sorts of crazy, terrible 1:43:29 - 1:43:51 things tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine by the slight of men and cunning, craftiness whereby they lie in, wait to deceive. But speaking, the truth in love may grow up into him in all things, which is the head even Christ. And I've mentioned this before. But speaking in 1:43:50 - 1:44:20 the ancient languages, that doesn't just mean talking, speaking the truth is living the truth in love. Why? Because love is to sacrifice yourself for the benefit of others. And the greatest sacrifice you can make is to learn and live the truth so that they might know the truth. Jesus prayed to the father 1:44:19 - 1:44:48 in John 17. He said, sanctify them in the truth by the word. The word was his demonstration. It's how he is. He kept his disciples in the word by showing them what the father was like and by helping them to be like that themselves. 16 from whom the whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that 1:44:47 - 1:45:07 which every joint supplies according to the effectual working in the measure of every part maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself and love, which is a fancy way of saying that we're all in this big network where we all understand God a little differently, less differently as we ascend 1:45:06 - 1:45:31 . But nevertheless, we're all a little different, at least a little. But as all of us do exactly what we believe Jesus would do in our place. We move forward the purposes of God. We all work together and we all ascend together. 17. This I say therefore in testify in the Lord that ye henceforth walk not 1:45:30 - 1:45:54 as other gentiles walk in the vanity of their mind, having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them because of the blindness of their heart. Now, this is again, this is Paul speak, you know, Paul was an absolutely clear speaker, just profoundly 1:45:53 - 1:46:22 persuasive and clear in the Greek or in the Hebrew, whatever language you happen to be speaking or writing. He was extremely eloquent and articulate. But we garble this up into English. It's like putting a beautiful person in a, in a big potato sack and then smashing them with a sledgehammer and dumping 1:46:21 - 1:46:42 out what remains. And that's what we've got in the English translations of Paul. But nevertheless, you could piece it all together and Frankenstein it and uh what he's saying here, he's referring to a couple of gospel principles, which is that when you live the the gospel, you actually have to live like 1:46:42 - 1:47:08 the Lord, not as the gentiles walk in the vanity of their mind or in other words, according to desires that are based on all sorts of ignorance about how things really are and, and uh which can only lead to disappointment. So their, their, their desires will be frustrated because they're not living according 1:47:08 - 1:47:32 to the truth and they're not desiring according to the truth. And when you live in open opposition to that, which you already see and know you will have your understanding darkened or your ability to see reality will diminish. It's not just a, a moral understanding of right and wrong that diminishes 1:47:31 - 1:47:54 , it's everything you will actually become dumber and the reverse is true, which gives us all hope. You cannot draw nearer to God without being enlightened. It's called quickening, isn't it? And so you'll become smarter, you'll become stronger, you'll become more capable of seeing and believing and doing 1:47:53 - 1:48:20 . But they're alienated from the life of God or the eternal life that God provides the way of life that He is. Because they willingly turn away from that, which they know their blindness of heart. They refuse to desire what they believe to be good, not what I believe, to be good, not what you believe 1:48:20 - 1:48:40 , to be good, but their own belief of what is good. They will turn away from that. That's the, the lifeline that God has given us all what is good, true, beautiful, worthy. We all have a sense of that. We all have a model of that and the model improves as you live according to it. But if you turn away 1:48:39 - 1:49:04 from it, it'll get worse. And that's what it means to be, to turn yourself over to lasciviousness, to give yourself to something less than what you could be. Your potential to turn away from it at will. And that makes you past feeling because it dulls your feelings. If you draw closer to God, you'll 1:49:03 - 1:49:35 feel a deeper love than you've ever felt. You'll feel greater joy, you'll feel greater sorrow, but you'll be given greater meaning. Turning away from all of that. That's the opposite of learning Christ. So you have to put all these things away and recognize those desires as corrupt as deceitful, as lustful 1:49:35 - 1:50:03 and set aside everything that can't ascend with you towards God. And that's how you prepare yourself to receive that, that good that can only come from above. That's how you become a new man. You become a man more like Christ or a woman, more like Christ. And it's the weirdest thing because as you set 1:50:03 - 1:50:25 aside more of who you thought you were and what you thought you had, you receive more of who he is and what he has and yet all along the way with every single step you feel for the first time, like you're really yourself you feel more like yourself than you've ever felt before. And you know, yourself 1:50:24 - 1:51:04 better than you ever knew before. You lose yourself. And you find yourself in the self that you find is in his likeness. And when he literally comes to you, you see his countenance in you and you see your countenance in him. And when he appears, you are like him and you're one in him and he is one in 1:51:04 - 1:51:55 you because through everything that He has given you over time, you have put on the new man, the perfect man Christ and God has recreated you in his image in righteousness and true holiness. And that's what church is supposed to be wrapping all this up. Please see this for what it is. I know that everyone 1:51:54 - 1:52:22 who goes to church, they find some value in it. There's a reason they do it. I'm not trying to take that away from you. What I am doing is I'm expressing to you the need and the opportunity to actually become more like Jesus Romans 13 says in that knowing the time that now it is high time to wake out 1:52:22 - 1:52:52 of sleep for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed. The night is far spent. The day is at hand. Let us therefore, cast off the works of darkness. Let us put on the armor of light. Let us walk honestly as in the day, not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in 1:52:52 - 1:53:22 strife and envying, but put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ and make not provision for the flesh to fulfill the lust thereof. Turn to Jesus with all of your heart, mind and strength, turn away from the provision for the flesh and he will provision you with his spirit and he will continue to flow that in 1:53:22 - 1:53:39 you and through you through receiving what he sends and through sharing what he's given you will by degrees come to be more like him. And that is what it's all about.