What is Truth~Avoiding Conspiracy Theorys

Good morning. All right. Greetings in the name of Jesus.

I'd like to speak about this morning. I titled the sermon title is, what is truth? If you remember that question, when Jesus was in front of Pilate and he was talking about, and Pilate said to him, what is truth? He asked that question, what is truth? And today we live in an age that has a lot of information. I don't think we've ever lived in an age with so much information at our fingertips.

Think about it. Think about how quickly you can get information. When I was a kid and I wanted information, I didn't have Google.

We had some encyclopedias. Some homes had news they could watch once in a while, or radio stations, but we didn't have the vast amounts of information. We didn't have social media.

Today we live in a world that we're flooded with information. The subtitle of my message is, and this is gonna get real down to home, avoiding conspiracy theories. Now, a while back, I gave a little topic at our youth singing, and I talked about this.

And a couple weeks back, I heard Roger say, someday I'd like you to share it with our church. So I decided this would be the time. So buckle your seatbelt.

So what is the word conspiracy? Before I go there, let me say what my goal is. My goal for this message is not to convince you that conspiracies don't exist. I'm not trying to get you to think that there's never ever such time as a conspiracy.

Everybody in the planet are all good people. That's not true. We all know that's not true.

There are conspiracies, there's plenty of them, they exist. But what I am trying, the goal of this message, is to define Christianity, first of all, and to define what it means to be a Christian, and then also to show you the dangers of assumptions, the dangers of speculations, and the dangers of spreading those speculations and assumptions. So that's my goal.

Now, what is this conspiracy? By definition, a conspiracy is a secret plan by a group of people to do something unlawful or harmful. And many of us can think back to many of the conspiracies we've seen, heard, read about. I remember years ago, sitting in my living room, and I think, other than Y2K, I did get excited about Y2K, and I stored up, and I had a little shelter underneath, and I had, I don't know, probably 20, 50 gallons of bleach down there, and bullets, and everything you could name.

So I did buy into that one. And then, several years later, I watched this video about 9-11, and how they bombed the towers. And it wasn't the planes, it was the government.

And I entered that, before I had watched it, I thought, you know, we'll see. Got done with it, I was so convinced. I was pulling out my credit card, donating money to this group, about, we need to get the truth out.

This is definitely a government conspiracy, okay. So I've been there, I've done it. So the word conspiracy means a secret plan by a group to do something unlawful.

Notice the word secret. It's not known by the public, it's secret. What does the word theory mean? The word theory means a speculation, a doctrine, or a scheme of things, which terminates in speculation or contemplation.

So the very definition of this is speculation. And I want to talk about this morning, is it right for Christians to be in the area of speculation? Conspiracy theories are descriptions of an event that reject the standard explanation. We might hear a standard explanation.

The plane was driven by, or flown by a Muslim, and it hit into the tower. That's the standard explanation, but it rejects the standard and credit a covert group or organization with carrying out a secret plot. They arise around almost every significant world event, and even some not so significant world events.

In other words, you see a significant world event take place, mark my words, there'll be a conspiracy that's going to arise from it. A conspiracy theory about it, who was behind it. It wasn't what you think, it was something else.

9-11, I don't know if you heard about Sandy Hook, there was a government, sorry, a school shooting. Some person went in there, shot a bunch of children. And of course, conspiracy theories arose that this was all planned by the government, and it was to take away gun control.

And so parents whose own children had died were now receiving death threats on the phone, because they said you're taking part of this mass government scheme, because you're trying to take away our gun rights. This kind of stuff exists, there was recently a shooting where I think 16 people died in a church. And the pastor, as the man came in and shot, he was shooting people, his own daughter got shot and killed.

And then weeks later, he started receiving death threats. In fact, somebody came in and started screaming at him and said he was going to hang. And they said his daughter didn't even really exist.

So this is the kind of stuff that happens out there, to the point to where people believe in such wild ideas that they will actually act violently. We saw all that what took place with the Capitol riots up in Washington, DC. We live in a time that, like I said, information is abounds.

And not only that, but a recent study just showed that there is deliberately fake news being put out there. And we've all heard that term. But in a real sense, news that was deliberately made to produce you to click on it.

And as a result, it earns them money through ads. And this is all over the place. 35 million times during the most recent election cycle was this shared, these links.

35 million times people are sharing these links. And it's got some normal, some catchy title, like things Bill Gates does not want you to know. Or you know all the titles, right? And their goal is for you to click that, take you to a page, have ads on it, make money.

And this stuff is flying around all over the place. 35 million shares during just this last year of this kind of information. Now conspiracy theories are not new.

Conspiracy theories have been around all the way back since probably the beginning of time. Way back when, in the 14th century, when the Black Plague was roaming around and killing, I think a third of the people died. The Jews weren't dying for some reason.

And nobody knew why. At that time, they didn't understand hand cleansing. They didn't understand all these things.

But the Jews were not dying to the same rate as others. So theories started going around that, oh, the Jews are poisoning the Christians' wells. And guess what happened? Whole groups of Jewish communities were slaughtered and killed because of some of these theories that were going around.

There were theories going around in the medieval times that the Jews would capture Christian children and they would sacrifice them just to mock the Christians. And that actually was a book written later that Adolf Hitler was inspired by for the Holocaust. To justify killing millions of Jews could be traced all the way back to theories that started about these very things.

And it's no different in our time. At the Capitol riot, we just saw what was very alarming, very alarming, is right in the middle of don't tread on me flags and Confederate flags and Trump flags were Christian flags, were Jesus saves flags, were Jesus 2020 flags. I don't know if you saw some of the images, but the guy with the horns standing on the Capitol, he was praying, thank you, God, for rebirthing our nation.

At the same time, they were building nooses outside to hang some of the governors. And we're saying if they could just get their hands on them, they would have killed them. This is the kind of stuff that's happening in our society.

And this is the kind of stuff we need to be aware of as Christians. So at the heart of all of this is that conspiracy theories are based off of assumptions and speculations. Now, I want, like I said, to the start of this message, I said, what is the title? It is, what is truth? And that's what I wanna start off with was what is truth? Daniel says, in the end times, many will run to and fro on the earth and knowledge shall be increased.

We are living in that time right now. I mean, just look at it. We can get on a plane, some of our children in one day, we're on the other side of this nation running to and fro, right? We have the ability to move and we can move fast.

We can be here and across the world in a day. And knowledge is increased. I mean, we know a lot of things that we never knew.

And we have access to knowledge like no other generation has had. But with that comes a price. Let's all turn to John chapter one.

John chapter one. So what is truth? They're all colorful. I'll go with the white.

Okay, John chapter one in verse 17. It says here that the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. So let's talk about this a little bit.

In the old covenant, we had a foundation. Think of these big skyscrapers and they sit on a foundation. They sit on a massive concrete.

I mean, I've seen some of the pictures for the World Trade Center and what they had under there just to keep this thing up and standing. The foundation, the very cornerstone, the bedrock of the Old Testament was, what does it say? The law came by Moses. But in the new covenant, we have something here that's holding this massive structure up and it's called grace and truth.

And I don't wanna focus too much on grace this morning, but we do know that a couple of definitions of grace in the New Testament. It says that one of them is the grace of God of the peer to all men, teaching us to live God righteously, godly and sober, however that goes. So grace is a teacher.

It says that in Hebrews, it says, let us have grace whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear. So grace allows us, gives us power to serve God acceptably. Paul says, I labor more than all the apostles, yet not I, but the grace of God that was in me.

Grace labors for us, okay? So one of the things that's way different about the Old Covenant is we have this thing called grace. And I like to think of it as the work of the spirit. It's really teaching us, it's giving us power, and it's allowing us to serve God acceptably.

And we talked about this in the past, to have grace, we must humble ourselves. God resists the proud, but he gives grace to the humble. We can't even be saved without grace, right? For by grace are we saved.

But let's talk a little bit about truth. Now, in chapters 14, 15, and 16 of John, Jesus calls and talks about this thing called the comforter. And he refers to him three times throughout those chapters as the spirit of truth.

Jesus says that he will proceed from the father, the spirit of truth. He says, he is with the disciples, Jesus said, but he shall be in you. And he says, he will guide you into all truth.

So in the new covenant, one of the biggest things we have different, imagine this as this written paper, what can written paper do for us? Not much, but in the new covenant, we have this strength and this power, and we have this teacher in us, guiding us into all truth. The importance of truth in the New Testament, grace and truth came through Jesus Christ, obviously something different than whatever was in the Old Testament. Let's turn to 2 Thessalonians, chapter two.

We'll look in verse 10. It says, I'm in the wrong book, talking about this antichrist, the man of sin, whatever you wanna call him, being revealed, and the Lord will destroy him with the brightness of his coming. And then notice what it says, and with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish, because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved.

One of the things that happens when you come to Jesus, if you really come authentically, is you want to receive the love of the truth. You no longer want to define the world your way. You repent of your opinions and your concepts and your logic.

And you say, I want your way, God. I want your way, however it is in the scriptures. I wanna follow your way.

Your law is beautiful to me. And so God gives us a love of the truth. Isn't that an amazing thing? He gives us a love of the truth.

So one of the very definitions of Christianity is a person who loves truth more than anything else, more than his church, more than all of his traditions. He wants truth above all. You know, when we start putting those things above truth, there's a danger.

We put the fear of man in place. So a Christian by very nature loves truth. Go to John chapter four, please.

This is when Jesus was talking to the woman who had five husbands, John chapter four. And we know the story. You know, they're having this interaction by the well and she's kind of a little bit mocking him, you know, oh man, give me some water.

I'd love to drink forever and all these things. And finally, he says something to her that makes her realize he's speaking more than his own knowledge. He's speaking of God.

And she said, sir, you must be a prophet because he said to her, yeah, you're right. You don't have, you know, your man you're with is not your husband because she said, I don't have a husband. He said, of course, you don't have a husband because the man you're with isn't your husband and you've had five others, however that goes.

But the point here is that she says, I perceive you're a prophet. And she wants to know, where do we worship? Do we worship in Jerusalem like you Jews say or do we worship on this mountain? She wants to know, where do I find God? And watch what Jesus, his answer to her is in verse 24. It says, he's saying, woman, the hour is coming.

In other words, this is new things starting in the new covenant. It's no longer gonna be in Jerusalem. It's no longer gonna be on the mountain.

It's gonna be something different. And here it is. This is what's different.

He says, verse 23, the hour cometh and now it is when the true worshipers, the real worshipers shall worship the father in spirit and in truth for the father seeketh such to worship him. God is a spirit and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. So by nature, the very definition of being a Christian means you love truth and you worship God in truth.

Your life is about truth. It's about reality. It's about something that he says is truth, okay? So where am I going with this? Well, by nature, a conspiracy theory is an assumption.

It's a speculation. It's not proven. It's not, it may be truth, but it isn't proven truth yet.

And God, it says seven things the Lord hates and are an abomination to him. And one of those things is to bear false witness. God hates people who go around and tell things that are not truth.

In fact, Jesus himself, when three gospels, the man came to him and said, what must I do to be saved, to inherit eternal life? He quotes from the law and he says, don't bear false witness. Jesus himself said, part of coming to the new covenant is not being a person who bears false witness. In fact, Timothy, I think it is says, in the last days, there will come and disobedient to parents and this long list.

And one of them is false accusers. So we have to take this very seriously as a church. We cannot fall into the place of being a false witness, false accusers, falling into assumptions and speculations because God hates it.

He wants us to be people who are consumed about him and what truth is. Now, the key tenants to any conspiracy theory, if you analyze any conspiracy a while back, somebody sent me a link. And it was all about, it was just right before Christmas and I just had to listen to him.

And it was wild. Like, I mean, this guy was seriously passionate about what was going on with the election being stolen. And he's like, do you hear that sound? And he's talking about, that's cold steel.

You know, there's gonna be blood on the streets. And he was talking about all these things. And, but I listened to him over, you know, you don't listen to this stuff anymore.

I used to listen more to this stuff, but it was shocking. Stephanie was in the room. I said, do you hear that? That's an assumption.

Do you hear that? That's an assumption. Do you hear that? That's an assumption. Over and over and over, he would make an assumption after an assumption, after an assumption.

The problem is, as we listen to that stuff, we start losing the ability to detect and see that those were all assumptions. And we start believing it. It has a way of drawing us in, conspiracy theories do.

So they all have a key tenant of assumptions. Let's turn to 2 Timothy. See what Paul had to say about these kinds of things.

2 Timothy 2, verse 23. Okay, 2 Timothy 2, verse 23. Let's just go in verse 22.

He says, flee also youthful lusts, but follow righteousness, faith, charity, or love. Peace with all them that call on the Lord out of a pure heart. That could even be thought of this idea of a truthful heart.

But foolish and unlearned questions avoid, knowing that they do, gender strives. Now in the NASB, it reads like this, but foolish and unlearned speculations avoid. This is this idea.

It's the idea of speculations. It's the idea of assumptions. Paul tells him, avoid those things.

Why? Because they gender strife. They gender division. They gender things in your heart that are not godly.

David says, who shall abide in thy tabernacle? He that speaketh truth in his heart. God desires truth, it says, in the inward parts. This is our God.

Solomon said, let mercy and truth not forsake thee. Bind them on your neck. Write them on the tables of your heart.

Mercy and truth. Keep those in your heart. This is how critical it is to keep these with us at all times.

Now, you may say, well, Jeremy, we don't have this problem. Well, I don't know, because I know my tendencies. I know how I can be drawn in.

Did you know, and I read an article somewhere, they said that most pastors, after this last year, they had no idea that their congregations were feeling like this, and then this last year came, and all these explosions and things happened, and they're just standing back saying, well, what do we do? We didn't know this all existed. It seems so far-fetched that anybody would believe some of this stuff, but did you know that, here it's just, I have some polls here, that it was some right-wing organization that did it, and it wasn't like, so they went through and they said, okay, do you believe that there was widespread voter fraud in 2020 election? 62% of white evangelical Christians believed it, and 29% of just the whole United States didn't. That's interesting.

Okay, that Biden, we don't have to talk about that, because it's the same thing, but the next one. Trump secretly is fighting an elite sex-trafficking ring. That's the QAnon stuff.

30% of Christians, white evangelical Christians, believed it, that there was this, that Hillary and some of these other people are actually abducting children and putting them in this ring and selling them off, and they're actually believing that that's happening, and a lot of people who went to that Capitol believed it. The deep state is at work in undermining the Trump administration. 50% of evangelical Christians, I never said the last one, it was 30% versus 15% of the whole nation.

55% believe that the deep state was basically undermining Trump's administration, while 30% of the nation, 50% believe that it was not the right at the Capitol, but it was Antifa at the Capitol, trying to make the right look bad. 50% of evangelical Christians, while 30% didn't. Okay, so where am I going with this? Well, charity believeth all things.

Now, I don't think that means it believeth all conspiracies, but listen how the Amplified puts it. Charity looks for the best in others. Charity looks for the best in others.

Now, let's talk about more of the tenets. So one of the tenets is assumptions. We talked about that already.

I don't know if I'm spelling this right, but I think we'll get the pictures. The next one that I wanna talk about is what's called confirmation bias. Now, it's interesting how I was talking to my wife this morning, and I asked her, she said, well, what's asked, confirmation bias? So I asked her a couple of questions, and immediately she could feel it in her heart.

If I said to you right now, oh, Biden did something really good the other day, would you feel anything in your heart? Like, how could he ever do anything good? Like, do you feel that a little bit in your heart? That's called confirmation bias. Now, if I said, Brother Roger did something really good the other day, oh, of course he did something good, right? Right? Exactly, right? What if I said, what if I said, God is against spraying chemicals in fields? All of a sudden, is that right? All of a sudden, well, yeah, I'd approve that one. Right? I'm just, I'm trying to, I'm not saying any of these are right.

I'm just saying, I'm trying to prove that we have what are called confirmation biases. What that means is, I have an opinion, I have a worldview, and when something agrees with my worldview, I say, it must be right. And when something doesn't agree with my worldview, I highly doubt it.

Right? That's how we are. That's confirmation biases. Okay? And so the reasoning goes, if you really look at it, is your opinion must be God's opinion.

And anyone who has a different opinion must be on the other side, right? That's what a confirmation bias is. Okay. Now let's listen to what the Bible says about this.

He says, reprove not a scorner, lest he hate thee. Rebuke a wise man and he will love thee. See, a lover of truth who wants wisdom says, I want to know, rebuke me.

I want criticism. I want to understand. Teach me.

I want, I have a teachable, humble spirit. But a scorner says, yeah, right, I don't wanna hear anything about that. Right? Proverbs says, whoso loveth instruction, loveth knowledge, but he that hateth reproof is brutish.

I like this one. Proverbs, a fool takes no pleasure in understanding, but only in expressing his opinion. Okay, that's confirmation bias.

And Proverbs are trying to show us that we don't want to be that person. Now we have biases. God put biases in us for a reason.

If you analyze the Bible, if you analyze a bias, it's a shortcut, right? Who wants to take, okay, for example, we all hear this guy and we hear that he's gonna be preaching the sermon and it's over at this church and we say, oh, like immediately that church, like put them in the box, right? How could anything come good out of that place? Okay, but we have biases. We need to understand them. Like they're not evil.

We have to know how to control them. Okay, that bias, we should say, okay, we'll use wisdom. We'll listen to his thing.

We're not gonna say there's no way nothing could come from him, but at the same time, we need to be on guard because maybe some things we don't agree with where he comes from. But we need to be careful with these biases. We need to be humble with them.

Okay, another thing, a big problem. So this is an issue with conspiracy theories is we hear it and we go, that lines up with my worldview. So it must be true.

And then what do we do? We turn around and repeat it. We're spreading things that could be false. They have not been proven just because it lines up with my world.

Another thing that's a problem with conspiracies, is theories, is they have circular reasoning. And this is super dangerous. I'll read you the definition of this.

Conspiracy theories are frustrating precisely because they are so intricate. Each rejoinder or contradiction only produces a more complicated theory. In other words, somebody comes and says to you, the world is flat and you try to bring something to prove it back and they only bring back more.

It brings back circular reasoning and I'll explain that. It says, conspiracy theorists manipulate all tangible evidence to fit their explanation, but worse, they will also point to the absence of evidence as even stronger confirmation. So you say, the world's, he says the world's flat and you say, but I don't think so.

What if I could prove it to you? And you try to pull out a picture to show him and he goes, that picture has been manipulated, right? There's just nothing you can ever bring as evidence because it's circular thinking. It always is making an excuse. If you try to show him some article, well, that was written by somebody who's on that site.

If you try to prove him that my daughter was dead, she never existed. She was shot, I watched it. No, it just goes on and on.

And so this is dangerous. It's circular reasoning, which never allows humility in, right? It just constantly affirms, affirms, affirms my opinion. And this is what's dangerous about the circular reasoning.

It goes on to say here, after all, what better sign of a really effective conspiracy is there than a complete lack of any trace that the conspiracy exists? Get that? That's great evidence that it's true because there's no evidence that it exists. That's dangerous reasoning. Everything, facts, the absent of facts, contradictory facts, everything is proof.

Nothing can ever challenge the underlying belief. Okay, and then one last thing I'd like to just point out really quick, I don't have the time to talk about it, but look at many of these. They're inspired by a loss of rights.

Like the Sandy Hook shooting, the Sandy Elementary School shooting. They're calling these parents saying, you're part of a greater government coup and all these things. What's fueling that is you're trying to support the government to take away our gun rights who they did this all fabrication to come out and say that it didn't exist.

So we don't want to lose our guns. Okay, so now let's get into a little bit. Why do we tend to? Why do Christians tend to believe these things even more than the world? Why? Well, let's talk about that.

Christians are people of faith if you think about it. They believe some pretty astounding things. Like I have this written later, I'll find it here.

I mean, think about this for a minute. We make some crazy claims. First of all, we believe in another world where these non-existent deities and angelic beings and demonic beings live and they can interact.

And 2,000 years ago, a man named Jesus was born. He was fully human, but he's also fully divine. And his words and his followers are God's words.

Whatever he said and his followers said they wrote, they're God's words. So we can read that in the Bible. He never did anything wrong and he allowed men to kill him and he even came back from the dead.

I mean, when you hear this from their view, it sounds like the local UFO group down the road. I'm not kidding. I mean, I was sitting here analyzing us singing our songs this morning and thought, man, this is really goofy.

Like we're singing about the blood and we're singing about strange things. Like we're all used to it, right? But this is what, we're just as strange. We're people of faith and we're believing faith is the evidence of things not seen.

So we have to implement faith to believe in all this interesting stuff that the Bible says, right? So that makes us prone. If we're gonna put in gear faith for this, it makes us prone to say, well, why not this, right? And this is where we need to watch for. This we believe in, this is not the same thing as this.

Okay, so let's keep going. He allowed men to kill him. Then he rose from the dead and the blood that came out takes away our sins.

And by the way, we get together on a regular basis and we drink little cups and we wash each other's feet and we say this is blood and it's weird. Like when you think about it from that angle. And when we all die, we can be raised and go to a place where gold is the pavement.

Like these are interesting concepts. And oh, by the way, our women wear this little piece of cloth on their head because of angels and because they should respect men. Like we do some strange things.

Okay, so why are we susceptible to this? Because first of all, we're people of faith. We are used to apocalyptic language. We just got almost done with reading Revelation and look at all the weird stuff that happens.

It's like the curtain is drawn back and wow, talk about the greatest conspiracy ever. All the things that we saw there. But let's analyze Revelation.

The purpose of Revelation wasn't that God would raise up these triumphal Christians through the nations and to conquer the nations, right? But it was that the nations, to show the Christians that the nations will not endure. And because of this, they were called to resist conforming to the nations and to preserve in their witness for Jesus as those who have a hope in eternity, even when they suffered persecution. The Revelation wasn't for us to say, okay, now let's go fight the nations.

Let's go take over the country. Let's make it. It was to see there's a greater thing coming, endure their persecution.

God wins in the end. So why are we here? Well, I think there's three major things I could point to to say why are we in such a crazy place right now in our nation where these conspiracy theories are believed by so many. One is just the weakening of our institution.

Think about political scandals. Can we trust our political leaders? Can we trust our government? Can we trust our governor? Can we trust our representatives? So that's crumbling around us. Think of all the sex abuse things that's going on in the Catholic church.

I just saw the other day the New York governor is now being said that he did some of this. All the misconduct to think about the police misconduct. Can we trust them? Think about all the financial meltdowns and things that are going on and dirty money laundering.

We're in a time right now where our key institutions in this country are weakening. They're falling apart. So that makes us very nervous.

That makes us concerned. Two, I think another reason why we are here is, this is gonna be a hard word for me, but the democratization of information. That means it's readily available to all like it never before.

Think of a democracy. Everybody can vote and it's not a dictatorship. It used to be that the information was very hard to come by.

Now it's just everywhere. Social media, YouTube, news sites. And not only that, I don't know if you know this, but when you search something, it is tailored for who you are.

We have now right wing news stations. We have less wing news stations. They watch what you're searching for.

They say, oh, he likes this kind of stuff. He likes flat earth mentality. So now when you get on the internet and you search there's flat earth stuff.

Oh, he likes this kind of, and as they're building a fingerprint of who and how you think, and it's delivered to you in that way. It's delivered to you for your personality and your biases. That's dangerous.

We're in dangerous times. So the democratization of information. And many of these things are paid for.

When you search something on Google and it comes up at the top, don't think that just came up without money involved. Finally, a third, a lack of trust in the media. Does anybody here trust the media? Like for many years now, the media has purposely been biased against Christianity.

They don't hold the core values of Christianity. They purposely fling and spin things in ways against Christianity. So we don't trust the media.

That's why we're here. And I say number four, people do not read their Bibles. And they do not fear God.

Like most people don't know what the Bible says about some of this stuff. And it ends up places like we've seen. So what's the harm? Let's, we have 15 minutes left.

What's the harm? I mean, what's the big deal? Why can't we just sit around after a meal and talk about the most interesting thing? Okay, thank you for asking. Number one, I think this is the number one in my mind. Now I know you might go to, well, it's our testimony.

And that's true. But what if I said to you, what's the harm of me indulging myself in a woman, other than my wife? Would you first go to your testimony? Like, well, Jeremy, it would be your testimony that would be hurt. No, like that wouldn't be the first thing.

The first thing would be, the first thing you'd go to is it's wrong. God says it's wrong. It's wrong to your wife.

It's wrong for yourself. You're sitting against yourself, right? And it hurts you. When you get into this kind of stuff, it hurts you.

How do I, what do I mean? It shapes you. It shapes how you think. It shapes what you say.

It shapes how you react. James said, the wisdom that is from above is, and it says first peaceable. And then it goes on.

It says full of, does anybody know what it says? Mercy, full of mercy. Full of, now I want you to analyze this. Somebody that is into conspiracy theories, are they full of mercy? Do they think the good for the other person? That's right.

Thank you. So full of mercy. And then the verse goes on to say, without partiality.

That's that word. The wisdom that's from above is not with partiality. It's not with biases.

Remember the guy that they said, you sit here in the back and you sit, you know, come up here, you know, because you have gold and you don't, remember? And James said, don't be a respecter of persons. That's evil. He called it evil.

They entertain evil thoughts. We are not to be Christians that are biased. We should be Christians that hope for others and hope for the good.

Rejoice is not in iniquity, but rejoice is in the truth. So it harms you. True Christians are ones who love the truth.

But when we allow our minds to meditate and entertain on these assumptions and these speculations, it affects the way we react. And the Bible says it eats like a tinker. You think of, you know what that tinker means? That's the same Greek word for gangrene.

It's that gangaresa. When we say gangrene, it comes from that word. You think of gangrene.

We got to chop stuff off, right? It starts spreading through your whole body, destroys. If somebody says, I'll just leave it. I just want, no, it kills.

It eats and destroys your bones. It will destroy you. You will not be able to react with mercy and compassion.

Think about Jesus. The ultimate conspiracy, they're killing God. And he hangs on a tree and he says, God, forgive them.

They don't know what they're doing. I mean, think about that. If you are immersed in conspiracies, you could not say that about Biden.

He doesn't know what he's doing, God. I see the bigger picture. You know, God, forgive him.

Allow him, you can't say that. Your heart can't really get behind that because you're full of resentment. You're full of, the weapons are carnal.

The weapons are in this world versus, no, I see the bigger picture. The weapons are not carnal. So it shapes who we are.

Jesus said, by your words, you will be justified. And by your words, you will be condemned. I mean, this, you read the thing from Revelation this morning about being cast in the lake of fire.

Think about that statement. Every word we speak will be brought up on the day of judgment and we will be justified by it or condemned by it. Every idle word we're gonna get an account for.

This is how truthful our God is. He is going to hold us to account on this major pillar of the new covenant. Okay, number two.

Why is the number two reason, I would say, that these things are dangerous? First of all, it changes who you are. Changes how you react, how you look at life, what your first reactions are gonna be, what your words are gonna be. Two, it quenches the spirit.

Think about a fire and this word quench. Think about this, I don't know how to draw fire well, but think about this fire, it's burning, we're sitting around it, it's giving us heat, it's giving us warmth, it's giving us energy, it's giving us light, right? If I walked up with a big bowl of water and dumped it on it, all of that would go away. One of the major things God does in our heart when we love truth is he brings mercy, right? He brings truth, he brings compassion.

Those are the things we see in Jesus. Jesus is the ultimate definition of this life. When we bring the stuff into our bodies, into our spirit, so the Bible says we need to cleanse ourselves of filthiness of the spirit, we are quenching that fire.

And once again, like I said, it changes you, it changes, it kills the work of the spirit, just puts it out, just like if I dumped water in a fire. Okay, three, it hurts. As soon as we say something with it now, it hurts and damages others.

Think of those parents who are now told, your daughter didn't exist. You know, you're just part of this greater conspiracy. You know, it hurts and it actually physically hurts them and can bring violence, as we saw at the Capitol.

Many of these people were driven by passions of conspiracy theories in the end, okay? And the last one, so let's go over these. What did I say? I said, it hurts you. I'll just put you, it quenches the spirit, it hurts others and can actually bring violence.

And last testimony, I'm gonna put last the testimony of the church. Now, think about this for a minute. When you say your outlandish claims that, you know, you get together and drink the blood of Jesus and his skin, I'll just say it's strange so we can all think about strange.

And you say that your wife wears that thing on her head because of the angels and because, you know, she's obeying God and you say all this crazy stuff that, you know, Jesus came back from the dead 2,000 years ago and was God and man all in one. And he lives in me now. Like, this is weird stuff.

Now, when you say that and then you turn around and say something that's not proven, something that's speculated, what do you think they put the, do you think they would put the two together and say, why would I believe him? He believes that strange concept. He believes Q Anon. Why would I believe him about Jesus? Do you see the damage we do to the name of Christ? People don't wanna believe in Jesus.

They don't wanna believe in our outrageous claims because we go to other sources called conspiracy theories. Now, like I said, this is, in a sense, the biggest conspiracy, right? The devil and all of that. But we believe it, we believe it.

And so our conspiracy theory, if you wanna call it, should stay wrapped up here. But when somebody comes to us and says, oh, did you hear so-and-so did this? Did you know that the masks, you know, it's just about the money. We have to wear the mask because of the money.

That, it might be, I'm not saying it is, but don't repeat it. Don't bring it into your heart. Let's, let's, I have a minute here to do something.

Let's go over a quick thing. I got some, some board rules for, you know, in the game, you have ground rules, right? So let's run, let's run this through. See if you can play the game of Christianity and be a conspiracy theorist.

Okay, so can you be a conspiracy theorist and do this? Can you read that back there? Can you do that? Can you be a conspiracy theorist? By the way, these are all Bible verses. I'm not coming up with my own ideas. Can you, can you, can you be a conspiracy theorist and do that? Can you be a conspiracy theorist and do that? By the way, if anybody's listening, the first one is do all things without complaining.

The second one is speak evil of no one. The next one is giving thanks always for all things. That's a neat double loop.

It's like always and all things. I mean, how do you get that going? Can you be a conspiracy theorist and a Christian and honor all men? Can you be a conspiracy theorist and speak every man truth with his neighbor? Can you be a conspiracy theorist and esteem others better than yourself? Can you be a conspiracy theorist and think on things that are true? And honest and just and pure and lovely and a good report. And can you be a conspiracy theorist and think about things in heaven and not on earthly things? How does it work? Can you play the game? Can you play the game, be a Christian and also be a conspiracy theorist? I don't think so.

So we need to wake up because this is what the Bible, I mean, this is just a couple of quotes, right? These are the short ones that I get on a paper. I mean, there's longer ones, but I don't see how we can be given into this stuff when this is what God says is about the New Testament. So how can we change? Well, I'd say the first thing is take every thought captive.

Somebody says it to you, that's interesting. And by the way, don't ever try to convince a conspiracy theorist that what they're wrong. The best thing to do is just say, wow, that's interesting.

What do you think Christians should do? Ask them some question about the Bible. Just get off it, you'll never convince them. So the better thing is don't try to do the circular reasoning with them.

Take your thoughts captive. Secondly, challenge your own thoughts. What I mean by that is the humble man says, ask questions and says, I want to learn, I want to have instruction.

So ask yourself, what would it take to disprove this theory? If there's nothing it could take to disprove it, you've got a problem, it's circular reasoning. Challenge your own thoughts. Is it an assumption? Ask, is this an assumption? Do I know this is fact? How are some ways we can know it's fact? Can anybody think of a biblical way, besides Roger, because I asked him.

I asked him last night, what would you tell a counselor? What would you as a counselor tell people on the phone? Can you think of a biblical way of how we determine truth? How do we know if something is said? If somebody tells me something, how do I know if it's true? The biblical way. Bible, thank you. Okay, what does the Bible say about? That's right.

In the mouth of two or three witnesses shall a thing be established. You know? Another thing, I like what Roger said a couple weeks ago. Ravi Zachariah, all of his enemies were saying this about, okay, hmm, I don't know.

When his friends started saying it too. You know, all of a sudden, this is becoming less biased. It's no longer only one side making the accusation.

It's both sides. That's another good indicator that it's probably moving into the realm of truth. If somebody comes to you and says, Trump's in this QAnon ring, you first have to ask, how can I prove this? If it's not provable, if it's not established, then don't spread it.

And I would say, don't meditate on it. Because it doesn't match these rules, okay? Has it been reported by other verifiable sources? Does it appeal to your bias? If it makes your bias go, ooh, I like this, then you should probably say, this is probably something I need to step back from. Have you fact-checked it? You can get the internet to say anything, right? It's called vetted.

The word is vetted. You vet the information that comes in. Have you fact-checked it? Don't take it into your soul until you know it's fact.

And here's another thought. Does it matter in the kingdom of God? You know when the, Jesus, okay, I was thinking, where was the conspiracy theory for Jesus? Well, one time some disciples came and said, hey, did you hear that Pilate's mixing the blood? You know, he's mixing blood on the sacrifices. That's kind of a government conspiracy, right? Like, Pilate's killing people, taking their blood out, and putting it on a sacrifice table.

Like, what should we do? This is a big government's conspiracy. You know what Jesus' response was? Unless you repent, you will also likewise perish. You see that it wasn't even, like, it didn't matter to him, because it wasn't about the kingdom of God.

He just moved on to the right focus, the kingdom of God. And let me ask you this. If you believing this, and taking it, is it going to produce mercy and compassion in your heart? Or is it going to, by you taking these assumptions in, what is it going to create? We're going to read Ephesians chapter four, if you'd turn there and we'll close.

But let me say this last word. There are a lot of people making a lot of predictions nowadays. And the Bible talks about what we do with false prophets.

In the Old Testament, we took them out and stoned them. If somebody tells you something, and it's a speculation, and it doesn't come true, you need to mark them, and say they are giving bad information. But what's really concerning is how, people will make speculations, oh Trump's going to come into the White House, and he's going to send everybody home, and then he's going to declare martial law.

It never happens, and we go on listening to the guy. Those kind of things should be shunned. We should avoid them.

They are false prophets. They were stoned in the Old Testament. So, keep that in mind.

Ephesians chapter four. Let's just read to end this sermon, 17 through the end of the chapter. This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that you henceforth walk, not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind.

Having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God, through ignorance that is in them. Because of the blindness of their heart, who being past feeling, had given themselves over to lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness. But ye have not so learned Christ, if so be that you have heard of him, and have been taught by him, as the truth is in Jesus.

That you put off, concerning the former conversation, the old man which is corrupt, according to the deceitful lust, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind. And that you put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness, and true holiness. Wherefore put away lying, speak every man truth with his neighbor.

For we are all members one of another, be angry and sin not. Let not the sun go down upon your wrath, neither give place to the devil. Let him that steals, steal no more, but rather let him labor, working with his hands, things which is good, that he may be able to give to him that needeth.

Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good, to the use of edifying, which is building up. That it may minister grace unto the hearers, and grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby you are sealed unto the day of redemption. Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamor, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice, and be kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God, for Christ's sake, hath forgiven you.

Thank you for listening.