Don't Be Fooled Series

INTRODUCTION

• SLIDE #1

• Sometimes for those in Christ it is hard to keep in mind that we are under attack on a daily basis.

• Some of the attacks come from people we know, some from people we love, some come from the culture in which we live.

• The media is on a crusade to attack our faith from as many fronts as possible. The courts are starting to chip away at our religious freedom, and it appears as though the government is becoming increasingly antagonistic toward one’s faith.

• Some of the attacks we endure are subtle in nature, others are more blatant and outward.

• When you look to the media, we do not see many positive depictions of people of faith.

• The ones that do sneak through are usually successful at the box office. One would think that would motivate Hollywood to give more positive portrayals of Christians.

• More times than not, Christians are portrayed as “flat earthers” who are bigoted and narrow-minded.

• By the way, if you want to see a positive movie, Unbroken is a good one to see. It does have one short scene that one may object.

• It gets increasingly more difficult to take our faith to a society that revels in ridiculing our faith.

• Because of the fact that we are hit from so many sides, it could make us feel like what we believe is not true. We could start to think that maybe we are wrong.

• If we are not careful we can allow the world to fool us into forsaking our faith.

• When our children and grandchildren go off to college, they are confronted by many forces that tell them our belief in Jesus is dumb and is not logical.

• This is one of the reasons we need to understand why we believe what we believe.

• In John’s day, there were many who were working against God by either by being a false teacher or by claiming to be the Messiah.

• I want to encourage you to keep the faith. It is important for us not to leave Jesus; we cannot allow others to influence us to leave Him.

• Let’s begin in 1 John 2:18

• SLIDE #2

• 1 John 2:18 (HCSB) Children, it is the last hour. And as you have heard, “Antichrist is coming,” even now many antichrists have come. We know from this that it is the last hour.

• SLIDE #3

SERMON

I. Recognize the time you live in.

• VERSE 18 tells us we live in the last hour.

• This is the only place I could find where the phrase “LAST HOUR” is used in the New Testament.

• It is so important for us to recognize that we live in the last hour. If we think we have forever, then we will think we have plenty of time to go back and forth with our beliefs.

• What does John mean when he speaks of living in the last hour, does this mean that we are going to all die in a few minutes?

• Peter and Paul use the term “last days”. These phrases are used figuratively for a fixed period of time preceding the Second Coming.

• The word “hour” is a translated from a word that means “a fixed date or period”.

• This thought ties in with the previous section that speaks of the world passing away in verse 17.

• We tend to think the world is not going to end, but one day it will!

• You hear folks talking about how we are in living in the last days, well, since the resurrection of Jesus, we have been.

• This age or dispensation will end with the second coming of Jesus, once that happens, game over for this world.

• Jesus speaks of this age in John 5:25 as an hour that is coming. That hour is here and is in the last stages.

• SLIDE #4

• John 5:25 (HCSB) “I assure you: An hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live.

• Since we are living in the last hour, it is not a time for us to mess around; it is time for us to be serious about our faith.

• We think that since it has around 2000 years since the resurrection, Jesus will not come back. Quite honestly, that has an affect on how we live our lives and how we conduct ourselves.

• We cannot allow ourselves to be fooled out of our faith because we live in the last hour!

• Let us turn to verse 19.