Twisted Truth Part One: Invisible world Ephesians 6:10-12 Good Morning and Welcome to Cedarbrook, if you are visiting today we are glad you are here, my name is Kyle I am one of the pastors here. Today we are kicking off a new sermon series titled Twisted Truth, and this morning we are going to be looking at something we cannot see. Hear that again we will be looking at something that we cannot see, yes that is a confusing statement. Maybe you are already thinking Kyle has gone crazy how exactly can we look at something if we cannot see it? Well, this morning we are going to be looking at the fact that there is an invisible world that impacts or visible world every single day. Let me give you a little example - Story about Child dumping skittles in the grass and eating them. 3 min I m not sure what I thought might get on those skittles as they spent 30 seconds in the church grass, but there might be no better example of the invisible affecting our visible than the idea of Germs. It is not the 1700 s anymore and we all know what germs are and we all understand that these microscopic organisms have the ability to impact our daily lives in an incredibly powerful way. Germs these unseen microorganisms can make us sick, give us a fever, make us throw up, and even have the ability if left totally uncontrolled to kill us, yet we can t see them. It seems like we are never more aware of these invisible threats than when we are parents for the very first time. When our first child is born it seems like we sterilize anything and everything we can get our hands on. We carry around large quantities of hand sanitizer and anyone who wants to hold or even look in our baby s direction we ask them to bathe in this stuff to prevent our kids from becoming sick.
I know when Drew was a new born Anna and I would do almost anything to make sure his world was sterile, we never let him even touch a grocery cart handle because you know how very dirty those are! As our kids grow and as our family grows in number of people this fear tones down just a bit, but we are still very aware that there are these germs. Although they do not scare us as much the older our kids get we are still very aware of this invisible world, that affects our lives every day. When it comes to germs and for the most part in the realm of science we have no problem believing that there is this invisible world that affects our visible world, but did you know that this same statement is true when it comes to spirituality? Yea, the Bible tells us that there is another invisible force at work that impacts our visible world as well. This invisible force has the power to impact our thinking, attitude, and world view, it can impact all of our relationships. This invisible force impacts the way we think about morality, purity, finances, marriage, it can impact how and who we date, how we run our business, it can and will impact each and every aspect of our lives. We need to know that this invisible world that impacts our visible world is a threat to us physically, emotionally, relationally. When it comes to unseen world of germs affecting us we all understand that and except it as truth, but when it comes to the unseen world when talking about spirituality, some of us become skeptics. So what is this invisible force that affects our visible world every day? It s the Devil. As we begin this Twisted Truth series I hope that you can leave Cedarbrook this morning understanding that indeed there is an invisible world that affects our visible world every day, and you do not need a microscope to see the effects that the devil has in our world. One way that this unseen spiritual reality becomes seen in our lives is by looking back. When you look back at a choice you made, a decision you made, something you did and you think to yourself how could I have ever been so stupid, so confused, so arrogant, so immature.
We often hear the phrase hindsight is 20/20, meaning that when we look back on our lives we can clearly see what was once so hard to see. Story about gambling while at Bethel- 3 Min In the rear-view mirror of our lives we often must ask ourselves the questions: How could my thinking have become so twisted, so twisted to think that that relationship was a good idea, how could I have ever thought that job, that get rich quick gambling scheme could ever work out. When you look in that rear-view mirror maybe you think, why could I not see just how bad of an idea that was, it is so clear now. I never should have - I never should have been with I never should have invested in, but at the time it made so much sense. We can even see it in others. We can see when our friends, our family, the people we love are making mistakes. In others lives it is so clear, it is just obvious, but what is obvious to us is not so obvious to them. In their world the choices they are making makes perfect sense. We all get to these places because there is a twist, there is a deception of reality that only makes sense in the moment, there is a twist of the truth that leads us astray. We can t see it because there is an invisible world that is affecting our visible world. The answers to these how questions, how could I have thought that, how could I have ever believed that, how could I have ever done that The answer to those HOW questions is actually pretty simple, Scripture tells us that we convince ourselves of these things because there is a twist of the truth, there is a confusion of the truth, there is a distortion of reality. But it is not a huge deception or huge twist to reality or no one would be tricked, no one would fall for the fake. The best lie is the lie that is the closest to the truth. Have you ever seen fake art, these impressions of the real thing that look so good, occasionally even the artist is confused. In the book of John chapter 8 Jesus helps us understand this unseen world and the control it has over us.
As John chapter 8 starts out Jesus is talking to the religious leaders, these religious leaders are doubters, they doubt that Jesus is the Messiah, they doubt that He is the Son of God and they are questioning Him. They are asking questions and trying to trick Jesus into saying something blasphemous. No matter what Jesus says, trying to convince them that he is the Son of God, they are not believing him. The religious leaders believe they are dealing with a counterfeit. There is seemingly nothing that Jesus can do to convince them that he is the Messiah. After many discussions these religious leaders still do not believe him and continue to questions Jesus, In John 8:13 they vehemently dispute his testimony. Now Jesus is getting fired up and he responds, John 8:14-19 Jesus answered and said to them, Even if I bear witness of Myself, my witness is true, for I know where I came from and where I am going; but you do not know where I come from and where I am going. 15 You judge according to the flesh; I judge no one. 16 And yet if I do judge, My judgment is true; for I am not alone, but I am with the Father who sent Me. 17 It is also written in your law that the testimony of two men is true. 18 I am One who bears witness of Myself, and the Father who sent Me bears witness of Me. 19 Then they said to Him, Where is Your Father? Jesus answered, You know neither Me nor My Father. If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also. Jesus turns the tables on these men and is calling out these religious leaders as the counterfeits, challenging them and their disbelief. Throughout John chapter 8 these religious leaders continue to dispute Jesus as the son of God. In John 8:14-19, Jesus is basically telling them that they have been deceived and that they do not even recognize him because they are so out of touch with God. The debate over Jesus testimony as the son of God continues and these men who are the religious elite continue to dispute Jesus claim.
Now Jesus seemingly takes of the gloves and take a serious shot at these men, in John 8:43-44, Why do you not understand My speech? Because you are not able to listen to My word. 44 You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources, for he is a liar and the father of it. In John 8, Jesus revels the invisible force that affects our visible world as the devil. Jesus tells these religious leaders, the religious elite that they do not know who he is because there is an unseen world that is affecting what they perceive. There is a deceiver, the devil, that has so deceived them that they cannot see the truth right in front of them. Jesus tells the religious leaders that they are children of the Devil, that the Devil has deceived them with a lie, a twist of the truth. In these verse Jesus reveals that he believed, that he knew that there was a very powerful unseen world that affects us each and every day. Jesus believed that the devil is real, and he teaches us that the devil is the source of lies and deception. That He is a murder, manipulator, and a liar. Jesus goes on to tell us that the Devil, this unseen force in our world, he has an agenda and that agenda is to destroy human life and to kill relationship with God. And sure enough, after some time had past, those religious leaders that Jesus was confronting in John 8, they believe the twist they bought into the deception of the Devil and they lied about Jesus and they crucified him. They had Jesus killed. Because that is what the devil does, he tells lies and twists that truth to manipulate us, and to destroy us if he can. Simply put, the devil is real, Jesus knew it, and Jesus knew that the devil has an agenda, The devils plan is to destroy our lives, he wants to destroy your life and relationships, and he is going to do this by deception and confusion, by twisting the truth to lead you far from God. About 30 years later, after Jesus death, the apostle Paul starts to write to Christians. He knew exactly what Jesus was talking about, he understood the deception of the
devil, and he was writing to the church in Ephesus to help them understand it as well. Paul is writing to the Christians in Ephesus teaching them how to live out their faith, how to live as Christian s. Paul had a desire that all people would know the love of Jesus and that this love would help them to live a life as an example of his love for others. So Paul gave instruction about living the Christian life, how to raise kids, work, play, what marriage might look like with Christ at the center, in his teaching Paul warns these early Christians to be aware of the devils schemes and plans, he warns about the lies and deception. Ephesians 6:10-12 Finally, my brothers, be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might. 11 Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. 12 For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. Our struggle is not just against the flesh and blood, (that is, the people in our lives), our struggle is not just against what we see and who we see, but our struggle is against the spiritual forces of evil. Paul, like Jesus, understood that the devil had a plan, a scheme to destroy human life. Paul and Jesus, they both teach us that the devils only plan, his only tool is deception, twisting the truth. The devils only tool is to take what is true and twist it, distort that truth just enough to lead us astray. Not so twisted that it is easy to see, but just distort the truth enough to be believable, and just enough to harm us and lead us away from our relationship with God. The devil will take what is true and distort it in a way that will destroy us. He will take things that are created for good and distort them just enough that they will destroy us:
Take an appetite, something good that will sustain life, and the devil can turn an appetite into a food addiction, and we get disordered eating, either too much food or too little. Appeal- things that look nice and he twists it into jealousy Appreciation of beauty becomes - lust Desire to provide for our family becomes - greed The devils scheme is to twist our reality just enough to lead us away from God. The devil wants to twist and distort the truth and our view of God so that when our lives are affected by this unseen world and death and relational breakdowns occur we blame God, rather than blaming the devil. In our anger, we make more bad choices, and we blame God for the consequences of those choices, and we are separated from God. That s it, that is the devils play book, he wants to twist and distort the truth, just enough to get you to believe it, and when we believe the twist, the distortion, we will blame God for the results and our relationship with him will suffer and be broken. Throughout the rest of this series we are going to explore some of the common twists of the truth, some of the ways that Gods truth has been twisted by the devil and how we can recognize these twists and overcome them rather than allowing them to destroy us. Next week, Remy will look at how the truth has been twisted in our view of sex and the impact that has had on our culture. Then he ll look at how many have a distorted view of suffering. And finally, Matt Kendziera will join us again to talk about how many of us have a twisted view of submission to authority.