False Teaching, Part 1
Summary
Dominic Jackson explores the theme of false teaching, drawing from the biblical text of 1 John 4:1-3. He begins by contextualizing the New Testament's warnings against false teachers, noting that unlike Old Testament warnings about external threats, these were about dangers arising from within the church. Dominic argues that the most dangerous false teachings today are not outright lies but are partial truths, similar to the Gnosticism John was addressing.
He analyzes several modern "American gospels," such as the "Doomsday Gospel," the "Evangelical Gospel," and the "Prosperity Gospel," evaluating the truths they contain and the ways they distort or fall short of the complete biblical gospel. Dominic concludes the first part of this two-part sermon by restating the core gospel from the scriptures and encouraging us to reflect on which pseudo-gospels we might be tempted to follow and to re-engage with the biblical accounts of Jesus' life.
Questions for reflection
What are some subtle or overt “false teachings” you see in our time that distort who Jesus is?
How can we differentiate between a healthy emphasis on a particular aspect of the gospel (like justice or evangelism) and turning that single aspect into a new, distorted gospel?
When have you felt tempted to shift your foundation away from “what you heard from the beginning”?
Beyond reading one of the four Gospels, what other spiritual disciplines or community practices are essential for protecting oneself from the appeal of these subtle "American gospels"?
How can abiding in Christ help us remain steady in a time of religious confusion or skepticism?
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As we wrap up our series in 1 John, what a rollercoaster has been, this little short letter, which is in many ways more like a sermon, a major theme that we have found over and over and almost every single chapter has been this ideal of false teaching. John just keeps returning to this. John addresses this, and so far we haven't even really talked about it too much. Of course, warning against false teaching is nothing new. The Old Testament prophets, Jeremiah, Moses, Isaiah, Ezekiel, had plenty of warnings for the Jewish people, about outside practices, about pagan worldviews over. We read that. However, something interesting happens in the New Testament where there are even more warnings, more concern about false teachers from Peter and Timothy and Jude and Paul, the author of Hebrews, which might've been Paul, we don't know, but Jesus himself, right? However this warning it comes up over and over, but what's different is outside of in the Old Testament, which was about false prophets outside, this is happening inside the church.
Here's second Timothy where we hear from Paul, a seasoned pastor at the end of his life and he's writing to a young pastor who's about to prepare his ministry, and he writes in one of the last verses in the last chapter of his last, probably his last letter, he writes these words, preach the word, be prepared in season and out of season, correct? Rebuke and encourage with great patience and careful instruction for the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine instead to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They'll turn their eyes away from the truth and turn aside to myths or lies your translation might say, but you keep your head in all situations and dear hardships, do the work of an evangelist discharge all the duties of your ministry.
And so likewise, John is warning the early church the same thing. Be careful, be on guard, be diligent, be connected to Christ because it's the only way you are going to be able to discern what is right and what is wrong, what is good and what is evil. However, worth noting, you might notice something strange in our text for today. John says something a little, I think underwhelming in regards to the false teaching. He says, many false prophets have gone out into this is one John, many false prophets have gone out into the world. This is how you can know God's spirit. Every spirit who confesses that Jesus Christ came to earth as a human is from God. And every spirit who refuses to say this about Jesus is not from God. And the reason I share this alongside of Paul's message, I could have chosen 20 other verses warning against those who corrupt the gospel and use it for their own agendas or desires.
The reason I have both of these together, Timothy, while we're camping out in one John, is because if we were to just read John's words here of what is false teaching, it is anyone who denies the humanity of Christ, right? That's it. According to this verse, the problem today without looking at history and context of John's letter is there's tons of false teaching out there that has no issue with Christ being fully man, none. In fact, most major religions will say that Jesus was not only man, he was a great man. And if we just poll out this one verse from John to separate good teaching from bad teaching, seems like John is setting the bar pretty low here, right? Do you believe Jesus to be human? Cool. John says, the spirit of your message is good. What day do you want to preach? Right?
I mean, random person at the street corner, if you believe he was human, great. This is the spirit of God. Apparently the vast majority of scholarship, the most secular atheist historians acknowledged a very real man named Jesus. The majority. Almost every modern world religion today believes Jesus was a man who existed. So do they pass the first John test of not being a false teaching kind of, but again, recognizing the problem, John was speaking out against G narcissism, which we explored in week one where many were teaching that Jesus was a spirit or an aberration or a ghost because the human world was sinful, depraved, and corrupt according to them. Therefore, Jesus couldn't have been human, the human. And so John corrects this. You can listen to that message if you're interested, but the reason I mention this is because what is interesting about the false teachings of John's day where he's writing this letter, the false teacher in the first century that John thought was so important to correct and rebuke this message wasn't coming from an atheist claiming Jesus wasn't real.
That's not what John is correcting here. It wasn't from a Satan worshiper saying that Jesus was evil. In fact, this message, it wasn't even pointing to a different God or deity. If you read what they say their message was all about Jesus, just not all of Jesus, which meant the message was a lot simpler and likewise, a lot more dangerous because it still was Jesus' focus. It was just a very different Jesus they were pointing towards. And though 2000 years have passed, I still believe the most dangerous lies in the church today because remember, these New Testament writers are writing to the church, not the pagans, not the Greek God worshiping temples. The threat is to Christians from others claiming to be Christians. And the most dangerous lies in the church today are often partial truths or some truths or twisting a truth, which was the case with agnostics.
Jesus was fully God. Yes, that is true. No lie detected, but he was also fully man, which they didn't believe. Again, a half truth is more dangerous than throwing out the whole truth because it's a lot sneakier. It's a lot easier to miss and it's a lot easier to justify. And so this morning as we talk about false teaching, this was the criteria I was hoping. I was attempting to find half truths, half goods, twisting truths even. And so I could have played it safe and talked about false teaching. And the first century, this could have just been one big history lesson which I have been known to do. Sorry, not sorry, I'm a nerd. Or it could have gone with other world religions, right? And showed the differences between Christianity and Mormonism or Islam or Rastafarianism, right? Not from a place of judgment, but as like an apologetic of understanding.
Here is what Jesus says about himself, and here is another perspective. We could have done that or I could have gone after cults. There are people out there who believe the founding fathers were lizard people look it up on Reddit, they actually believe this. Others think that birds are not real and are recording us. Others think we're all living in a computer chip somewhere. There are people who believe these things. The point is that it would've been a lot easier to read this text about false teaching and then go after the DaVinci code or the Flying Spaghetti Monster or the Haley Bop comment followers, right? That would've been an easy sermon. Hey, there's a lot of crazy beliefs out there. Be careful when you're watching the History Channel late at night or whoever the next guest on the Joe Rogan podcast is, right? And that's it.
The point I'm trying to make is often when the discussion turns to what is right and what is wrong and who has the right theology and who is reading this book correctly, most of us will look out there other time periods, other religions, other denominations, other churches even, right? That's where our focus goes. Whenever we have a category of what is right teaching and wrong teaching, most of us will look out there. We certainly won't look in here, and we definitely won't look in here in our hearts. And though I would've loved to preach that other message, the truth is there probably aren't a lot of secret cult members in here or flying spaghetti monster disciples or people from other religions. If you are here, I would love to meet you and I would love to grab coffee and hear your story. But more than likely, most of us here are either disciples of Jesus or compelled with Jesus or at the very least investigating Jesus.
And so as a pastor, I had to ask myself, what is the equivalent of what John was preaching against 2000 years ago to the church to that day? What is the equivalent? Remember, there was a little bit of gospel in there and a belief in Jesus and half good theology, and yet it was still leading people astray, which led me to ask, what are the false gospels of today? Things that are either containing truth or things that are half true or things that are adding to the gospel or simply a temptation to replace the gospel. What are the Jesus ands or the Jesus but first or the teachings of Jesus except for those parts? And so this morning I ask for grace, I ask patience, and for some of us this might be the first conversation of many. If you disagree, I welcome it always.
If I'm wrong, correct me. I drank a lot of coffee, let's hang out and if we need to release a statement next week about something dumb, I said, me and the elders will do that. But in the meantime, I kept asking myself, if John visited Des Moines, somehow he probably would not be going home and writing us a letter about gnosticism. He probably wouldn't be warning against the teachings of the Sadducees. He wouldn't be telling us to watch out for those Greek philosophers in the town square who are teaching heresy who have been dead for thousands of years. He wouldn't, but I do believe that he or Paul or Jude or Jesus, if they were here today, they would still be talking about false teaching. It would just be pointing to different examples. So let's pray and then hop into our text again and as we're praying, can you do me a favor?
You can do this for me often every week. I actually specifically asked some of you, but if you can just silently for a moment, pray and ask God, as crazy as this is that he would use me and use this text and use this sermon to speak to you and to speak to me as well, the person speaking as flawed and perfectly imperfect and distracting and distracted and rambly as I am. Would you pray that right now? Just ask God, whatever it is you want me to use this guy of all people, use this sermon to speak it and help him to get out of the way.
Spirit of the living God, give me the words, give me your heart. Amen. If you were here a few weeks ago when we talked about the antichrist verses in one John, you might remember that this word anti-Christ wasn't referring to a man or a character from the left behind books or a political figure. In fact, this word or really trans alliteration, anti Cristo can either mean an adversary of the Messiah or the word can be used for a replacement of the Messiah. And so when we talk about things that are antigo anti Jesus antichrist, most of us imagine a person selling something saying You could believe in Jesus, but have you considered this God instead or an adversary of Jesus attempting to call what is good evil and what is evil good to confuse people, to get them to follow the occults or demonic forces or the Satan?
And though both of the definitions are true, I think the sneakiest way to confuse a believer, an actual follower of Jesus, the temptation is to add to the gospel or to take away from it. And the problem with both of these is it doesn't just dilute the true gospel, it destroys it. Paul writes in Galatians one, six, I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you to live in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel, which is really no gospel at all. And so today, in the spirit of John and also with the reminder from Paul that there is no other gospel, no qualifiers, no separations, no improvements, no takeaways, anything else is no gospel at all according to Paul. And so this morning we're going to look at seven American gospels of today. Don't worry, as I was writing this late, late last night, I realized there's no way we're getting to all of them today.
Don't worry if you didn't pack a lunch. This will not be a four hour sermon. Nobody wants that. But we're going to briefly touch on half of them and then a little bit more as we go, we'll see, or this might turn into a two-part sermon, we'll all find out together. Additionally, and obviously there are of course many other gospels out there, but these are probably the most, in my opinion, prevalent and popular. And so as we explore each one, we'll do exactly what John tells us. Test the spirit of the message and ask ourselves, is this the gospel of Jesus or not? Those are the two categories, not is this half of a gospel or does this sound similar to the gospel or could it be the gospel with some tweaks? It either is or it isn't. That's what we're asking today. A couple of disclaimers credit where credit is due, Walter Brueggeman, NT Wright, Tim Keller, John Mark Comer, we're all incredibly helpful in this message as well as CS Lewis screw tape letters.
I reread again the work of Chung Kung a South Korean theologian, and lastly, a great book from Rosaria Butterfield called the Gospel Comes with a House key, all super helpful in the sermon, and I have notes, resources, I'm happy to share If I say anything that sounds too smart to have come from me, it probably didn't. I'll do my best to quote as I go. Another note, this will kind of be like a fire hose of info information instead of how I usually like to preach. I usually like to go line by line in a passage. We're covering a lot of ground today. And then lastly, the heart here is not to teach from posture of judgment, condemnation, intellectual, or spiritual superiority. I'm preaching to myself here, please hear that. And also for any criticism you may hear, this is from a place of love and understanding and not to judge good or bad, right or wrong, but instead, gospel or not, I'm going to say that like 50 more times.
That's the goal, so please give me grace. Okay, so with that said, is this a true gospel of Jesus or not? Number one, the doomsday gospel. Here's what it looks like. The world is going to hell. Everything is terrible, everything is wicked. And come, Lord Jesus, get us out of here, rapture us far, far away just in time for you to show up, destroy the world, which we're already doing a great job of that on our own. Anyway, also just in case, save your cans of corn or vegetables or whatever, mistrust, everything, come Lord Jesus, welcome to church. So first the good, we're going to do this with each one. Okay, the good. There are a lot of terrible things happening in the world and we as followers of Jesus believe in sin and evil and we believe in the return of Christ. We might disagree on details surrounding that, but one thing the doomsday Christians do well is a preparation or at least a consideration for last.
In times scripture tells us not a very good selling point if you're new around here, but the New Testament tells us that things are going to both be getting better and getting worse. In the end days, the kingdom of God will become more and more clear and more beautiful and transparent, while at the same time the world will become more and more difficult for followers of Jesus. And so instead of a fluffy message that says, follow Jesus, everything's going to be great. Everything will be easy. The Doomsday Gospel prepares disciples for adversary and difficulty, which is good. Many if not most churches do not. Additionally, followers of the Doomsday Gospel will often put their own comfort and reputation secondary to their message and conviction. The guy at the street corner with a bullhorn telling you, you're going to hell, that guy is fully aware. He's not very popular.
He does not get invited to a lot of parties. He knows that, and yet his conviction still have him showing up each week with a sign while people ignore him or at best curse or spit at him at worse. Personally, I truly admire that. I don't agree with it, but I admire that. Now, the bad, the issue with this worldview is followers of the doomsday gospel are often closed off to what is happening right in front of them watching tomorrow and missing today, also looking foolish each time that they predict the world is going to end, even though Jesus says in Matthew 24 36 that nobody knows the day or the hour predictions are still made, which also doesn't look bad for their version of the gospel, but all Christians, we all kind of get lumped into that on TikTok at least. Additionally, another issue with this gospel is the temptation to oversize things that are not anything other than what they are, whether it is a red star or a calendar date or a zodiac sign or war and devastation.
Additionally, if you believe certain events are necessary for the return of Christ, you must justify or ignore things that are actually anti-Christ, anti the way of Christ. One example of this is if you believe in order for Jesus to return, the world must go to war with one another. One country is more qualified and justified to destroy another based only on favor or geographical location. And the more people who die, the closer we are to the good news of Jesus, then over time your heart does not break for the hurting and the sick and the dying and the oppressed. This is just one more box to check on the list of Jesus coming back. And so the doomsday Gospel will not only justify war and pain and suffering, it will celebrate it. Another issue with the gospel, this gospel is if followers are not the bullhorn guy with no relational equity to those he's preaching against is often making false predictions that guy's doing too much, right?
The other in this camp is doing nothing right. They instead can be stagnant, closed off, and though incredibly observant, rarely obedient, the great commission from Jesus in Matthew 28, if you're aware, does not say, therefore, go and watch the news waiting for Christ to return. Take us away from all of this, do nothing in the meantime, but watch cable news, read Reddit sub threads, complain about the world and rejoice and more and more bombs being dropped. For surely I'm with you until the end of the age. No, Jesus says, get to work my work, my ministry, my heart. Join me in the renewal of all things, not to stand by and watch, not to stand beside and yell, but to be a vessel for the kingdom work at hand. Okay? So that's the doomsday gospel. And though Jesus shows up on the scene with a warning with many warnings, and Jesus does preach some things that are scary and can be classified as doom and gloom, he also preaches beauty and invitation and reconciliation.
So is this the true gospel? I don't think so. Next we got to pick up the evangelical gospel. This is one of those words that mean 10 different things to 10 different peoples. Whenever somebody asks me if I'm an evangelical, I often ask them to define it, and half the time I am and the other half the time, I'm definitely not. So of course, evangelical comes from the Greek evangelian just meaning good news. And yes, I'm all for good news and sharing good news, but here's what I mean when I say the Evangelical gospel. You are a sinner. You were born a sinner, and therefore what you need to do based on these passages is you need to believe in Jesus as your Lord and Savior in, okay? And you need to pray a prayer. The prayer is referred to often as the sinner's prayer.
Good luck finding it in the Bible. And since we don't believe in a works-based gospel, this is all you need to do to be saved. And by saved, I mean get into heaven. Speaking of the saving or salvation isn't just an element of the evangelical gospel. It is the entire message. A typical question from those who share this good news would be to ask a person, often a stranger, do you know where you would go if you died tonight? And the work of the evangelist is to get this person to pray a prayer so they could confidently say, I'll see you in heaven and preachers or evangelists move on to the next person. Now, some of you're looking at me like, okay, yeah, but that is what I believe, right? And remember, our criteria is this the gospel or not the whole gospel, the only gospel or not.
And for the record, I'm not questioning a person's salvation. Please let me just get in front of that. I even believe there are doomsday Christians as well as all of the other gospels we'll look at who love Jesus and are attempting to best follow what they believe are his words. Our evangelicals, Christians, of course, that's not what we're looking at. We're asking, is this the best representation of the gospel of Jesus? Let's start with a good much of it. The evangelical gospel is, and this is obvious, but can't go unnoticed. The evangelical gospel takes Jesus' words concerning evangelism very seriously. And typically and often, this is not from a guy with a bull whore who hates you, and it's not from an iron fist, from someone who wants to control you. We'll get to that gospel later. This is in the form of invitation with a hand raised, a prayer prayed, coming down to an altar, being invited to a neighborhood program like a trunk or treat or a Christmas play.
And honestly, it can be beautiful. This is how I came to faith, and many of you probably have as well. However, one of the primary issues with this gospel is the entire focus is on salvation, and it's easy for the gospel to become fire insurance, KA, believe the right things, pray the right prayer. Be assured you're going to the good place when you die and now do whatever you want. Just make sure you continue to believe in Jesus somewhere in your heart, and the jury is out with evangelicals whether or not you can lose your salvation. So while you're at it, make sure to believe the right things all the way up until the end. The problem with this worldview isn't what it shares, but what it leaves out. Comer says it this way, Jesus' message isn't about getting you into heaven, but about getting heaven into you.
It's not about you going up there, but about heaven coming down here. It's not just not about transaction, but transformation. It's not just about what God wants to do for us, but more importantly what God wants to do in us, not just about what happens when we die, but what happens if we live. Another issue is a life of following. Jesus in many evangelical circles takes on many different arrivals or stages. You meet someone who is an unbeliever, you help them pray a prayer, and for most people this is the end. This is salvation. They have received the gospel. And so you have believers, and then you have a select few who might become followers. And then for the elite or those crazy, weird radical Christians, you have disciples who have a chart of their own and they're trying to get people to the next level.
Not only is this kind of a weird and unnecessary sanctification pyramid scheme, but it's just not biblical for Jesus. There are disciples and there are non disciples, and that's it. No distinction. You don't graduate or get a new patch when you memorize more Bible verses or help a certain amount of old ladies across the streets. You just don't. You either follow him or you don't by attempting to overcorrect a workspace. Faith, many have reduced Christianity to a set of ideals and moral conclusions that often take place in a person's heart and never leave their head. Grace isn't opposed to effort but to earning elli. Willard says, which speaking of additionally, when the focus is on quote being saved, this can easily be seen as a minimum requirement relationship. And by emphasizing the only question of whether or not a person is saved, what is under that can easily be?
Do they meet the minimum requirements for salvation? Not tell me about their faith. Tell me about their discipleship, their ministry. What is God doing in their life? No. When the question becomes is that person saved or not, the focus is on a singular moment versus a lifelong devotion. One pastor comparing this marriage as the New Testament writers describe our relationship between us and God with an earthly marriage says, imagine if a man were to propose to a woman and the bride to be, were to respond with, sure, I'll marry you, but first let's discuss the minimum requirements I need to meet in order to stay in this relationship. That would not be a good sign to start a marriage, right? But this can be exactly what a sinner's prayer kind of faith often looks like. It's a great place to start. Please hear that it's where I started, but it's an awful place to stay.
It's missing out on what God is inviting you to do, to follow Jesus. Follow means to move our feet. To be a disciple of Jesus is to do like Jesus did, and the promises of heaven should result in calling and conviction and celebration on earth instead of asking What happens if we die tonight? Where in paradise? And hallelujah for that, by the way. But a better question in the meantime is what happens if we live for Christ today? Okay, so that's the evangelical gospel containing gospel. Absolutely. Is it the whole gospel? I personally don't think so. Next, the prosperity gospel. I've taught on this, aah. So for now a quick word. This message has been ascribed many names such as the name it and claimant gospel, the bla it and grab it, which is my personal favorite, the health and wealth gospel or the positive confession theology.
In short, this typically looks like Jesus died so you can live. Jesus was poor so that you can be rich. The Holy Spirit is like a genie or a cosmic vending machine, and God wants to bless you greatly. In fact, this is the gospel that if you put your faith in him often by proving your faith with donations to a specific church or a televangelist, then God will bless you more and more and more and you can live your best life. Now, one of the things that I've heard over the years, honestly from I think often from well-meaning preachers, sometimes other times not so much, but is that ideal? If you give a hundred dollars today, then you're going to get a thousand dollars next month or something like that, and one day you'll get that mansion in private jet. You just need to have more faith or manifest this into existence.
Additionally, if these things are not happening in your life, you probably are doing something wrong and need to get right with God. Call in now with your credit card information and we'll help you because the best is yet to come. Of course, the problem with this gospel is that clearly nobody told this to the disciples of Jesus or Jesus himself, that the ultimate goal was health and wealth. If so, they failed miserably. In addition, many Christian martyrs even in the world today, not to say that you can't have money, many followers of Jesus both today and in the Bible we're wealthy. The point is not to make money your God or your gospel, okay, for time, I'm realizing that this is definitely going to be a two-parter, apologies in advance. So I think what we're going to do is not to leave on a cliffhanger here, but I want to start.
I want to have us ask ourselves a couple of questions. There's a few other gospels we haven't looked at. Johnny, if you could put up that list, we'll save them for another day and I will be prepared for your emails or comments. But there's the self-help gospel or the self-love gospel. In order for me to love others, I need to work on me. There's the sinners in the hands of an angry God or the wrathful gospel, which again we're asking ourselves is this the whole gospel, Christian nationalist gospel? More on that to come and the liberation gospel, and some of us might be hearing some of these things and saying, wait, that sounds like the way of Jesus, or that sounds similar to some of Jesus's teachings. The question that we're asking, not all of them, the question that we're asking is again, is this the gospel of Jesus?
And so something that I have learned that I've noticed is that there are some things, bless you. There are some things that in all of these gospels, there are truth in them and we'll return to this later, but I believe that Jesus cares deeply about justice. By the way, he cares about this nation as well. He cares way more about sin than we'll ever know. It literally cost him his life. Jesus does want us to prosper and live a life to the fullest. His definition is of course different than the world's. Jesus cares deeply about evangelism, hence his departing words in Matthew 28. And lastly, we believe Jesus will return one day to a world that in many ways is going to get darker and is in need of light and love. All of these things are true, and yet they are not the truth, at least not the whole truth.
They're not the truth the way and the light. And so talked a lot about false teaching a little bit or half-truths. We talked about some of the different American gospels. We'll explore more later next week. So we should probably end with what actually is the gospel. Here's what the scriptures tell us now, brothers and sisters, I want to remind you of the gospel I preach to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand by this gospel. You are saved if you hold firmly to the word I preach to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain for what I received. I pass on to you as a first importance that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the scriptures, and that he appeared to Peter and then to the 12.
And after that he appeared to many more. Christ was born. He lived, he was murdered, crucified, he was buried and was resurrected. This is the good news. And so my encouragement this week is to do a couple of things and we're going to pick this up again to look at some of those other ones. First, ask yourself, which of the gospels mentioned, if any, do you find yourself following or wanting to follow? I read an interesting anecdote that typically people who were raised in hard theological environments will gravitate towards a softer one. This makes sense if you grew up with the fire and brimstone or Christian nationalist or doomsday gospel, more on that later, you probably will lean towards a social gospel, the self-help gospel or the prosperity gospel. And if you grew up with a soft gospel that seemed water down or lacking, you might gravitate toward a harder theological stance.
Is the reason why many of my middle aged Theo bro friends had hippie parents, right? And why many of their kids are going away to college now and are often would identify as social justice warriors, right? Just an observation. Do with that what you will, but ask yourselves, in which ways are you tempted to add to or take away from the true gospel? Secondly, read through one of the gospels this week. That's what I'm going to be doing. I would encourage you to do the same one of the gospels of Jesus, Matthew, mark, Luke, or John, to help illuminate exactly what is and isn't in there. Not to compare to our American version to see which is more better or compelling, but instead to start here, to allow Jesus to tell us about Jesus and what's important to Jesus and what leads to Jesus and being more like him.
And then lastly, a question I've been asking myself is though we call them books. Typically in the church, the first four contributions to the New Testament are referred to as gospels. They open with the gospel according to Matthew or Luke or Mark or the Gospel according to John. And we read about the life of Jesus and how that life radically changed the author documenting it. And so a question for all of us to ask is, what is the gospel according to you? I know what the gospel according to Mark is, or the gospel according to John is, but what is the gospel according to Dominic? And that's something each one of us can ask ourselves. And how does my life reflect this more on this next week? But for now, let's pray together.
Lord Jesus, as we look at this word, we look at your life, your ministry, your heart, as we look at the gospel, the gospel of you being born and our faith being about instead of us trying to earn our way or trying to reach up to the heavens and reach up to God, it is about God coming down to us. And so as we read these gospel accounts, I just pray for you to soften our hearts to you and what is true and what is light, and what is love and from you, but also, Lord, harden our hearts to any distractions, any influences, anything that does not come from you. So Lord, thank you. Thank you for your word. Thank you for how your word helps us better understand the world instead of the other way around. And so illuminate this not just in our text, not just in teachings and the songs that we sing, and the lyrics that we sing, but illuminate this in our lives. Come Holy Spirit, we pray this in the name of Jesus. Amen.