Identifying & Avoiding Deception
June 4, 2025
Host: Hon. Sam Rohrer
Guests: Dr. Carl Broggi
Note: This transcript is taken from a Stand in the Gap Today program aired on 6/4/25. To listen to the podcast, click HERE.
Disclaimer: While reasonable efforts have been made to provide an accurate transcription, the following is a representation of a mechanical transcription and as such, may not be a word for word transcript. Please listen to the audio version for any questions concerning the following dialogue.
Sam Rohrer:
Hello and welcome to this Wednesday edition of Stand In the Gap Today, and it’s also our bimonthly focus on Israel, the Middle East and biblical prophecy. Today our returning guest is Dr. Carl Broggi, senior pastor of Community Bible Church in Beaufort, South Carolina, and it’s also the host of his own radio program entitled Search the Scriptures, his website for that program. You can find a lot more there is search the scriptures.org. Now for weeks, I’m just going to share this how we’re getting into the theme today for weeks. Now, as I do my research for this program, I’ve increasingly run across extraordinarily persuasive and convincing in some cases, interviews with multiple people in different settings with people making extraordinarily direct comments. In some cases those comments are very true and I resonate with them. The problem is that they are totally fabricated. Deep fakes created entirely by artificial intelligence.
The purpose is to deceive. Everyday headline news is promoted. We know that appears true, but totally fabricated or partially fabricated. The purpose is to deceive intelligence agencies like the CIA, the Mossad from Israel and MI six from the UK were created to theoretically correct intelligence so that our political leaders would know how to better make policy. But in reality, they were created as entities to destabilize and control nations other nations by deception. Now with artificial intelligence, implementation is at warp speed being driven here in America by Donald Trump and the billions of dollars from the billionaires in the Middle East by countries like Saudi Arabia and further perfected in countries like Communist China. The goal is to who can best control their people through deception? The goal of being honorable, just and truthful or moral was long ago discarded by political and economic kings in favor of truthfulness, pragmatism.
That’s what rains today. Pragmatism. The goal is covetous control with control being most effectively consolidated through the most effective use of deception and it’s worthy of note as I consider this, that in Matthew chapter 24, when the disciples ask Jesus about signs that could be observed indicating that his return was soon, the very first thing that Jesus said would mark that time was deception. His first response in Matthew 24, 4 was to take heed that no man deceive you. Deception, deceiving and being deceived is one accurate description of our age. Satan, the great deceiver is good at what he is and what he does and that’s deceive from the day he deceived even the garden and plunged the entire world into death in the curse of sin, deception has only grown in its deceptive deception. Deception is further enhanced today by a global communication system, a common global language in essence and governments of the world who have rejected the God of heaven and embraced lawlessness through the medium of deception.
It’s not just our leaders, though even here in ostensibly the most Christian nation in the world. You know, 94% of Americans identify with the Tower of Babel religion we call syncretism and manifest a total fulfillment of being deeply deceived as warned by Jesus in Matthew 24, 4. So anyway, so today because of Jesus’ warning in the inescapable evidence of dominating deception, pastor Matt Wrecker and the co-host Seed, and I will engage with Dr. Carl Broggi on this theme of deception. The title I’ve chosen for today’s program is simply this identifying and avoiding deception. And with that, welcome to the program, Carl, good to have you back.
Carl Broggi:
Thanks, Sam. It’s great to be here with you. And Matt, I know the topic we’re thinking about today is so important because it’s the oldest tool of the evil one all the way back from the Garden of Eden to the digital age, to artificial intelligence that you mentioned there in your intro deception runs through the whole world system. So this important program really matters. So thank you for having me.
Sam Rohrer:
Well, you’re welcome. So why don’t you just start us off here by offering a definition of the word deception or deceive and then briefly describe it.
Carl Broggi:
Well, if I suppose I had to define it from the Bible, then I would say that it’s leading someone to believe something that’s false. Sometimes it’s done by giving just part of the truth or withholding some of the truth. But bottom line, it’s misleading people. And Satan always has a way of making something sound close to the truth without being the truth and people bite on it and that’s what he’s inspiring. The world system is the god of this world. Small ‘g’ as Ephesians, but there’s two words in the original language is one in Hebrew, one in Greek, the Hebrew word is mema and it means it’s translated typically deceit or treachery. I was reading Psalm 32 the other day, how blessed is the man in whose spirit, there is no deceit. Jeremiah uses the same word mema where he says, you dwell in the midst of deception.
In their deceit, they refuse to declare me as Lord. And in the New Testament there’s a noun and a verb. It’s plain a, not that it matters, but let him who knows, let him, James says, know that he returns his sinner from his error from deceit, from the deceit of his way. He’ll save his soul from death or John in one. John speaks about how we should test the spirits to see whether they be of God or not. And then he says, we’re from God. He who knows God listens to us, meaning the apostles he was not from. God does not listen to us. By this. We know the spirit of truth from the spirit of deceit or error. Pate, same word. Paul warns about being tossed here and there by the waves of deceit, deceitful, scheming, same word in. And then it’s found in verb form as well. Like in the revelation, the great dragon who is identified as the devil in Satan. There’s coming a time when he’s thrown down to the earth and the Bible says he will deceive the whole world. So that’s the essence of deception. And of course people who are deceived don’t know their deceived, and that’s what a good deception does. You think you’re following the truth when you’re not?
Matt Recker:
Yeah, it is amazing Carl, that even in this great sermon on the Mount Jesus gives, really the first thing he says is take heed, let no man deceive you. So before he talks about all the wars and rumors of wars, he talks to the dangers of deception. So what do you see are the clear dangers of being deceived and what are some of the more subtle dangers of being deceived?
Carl Broggi:
Well, deception, obviously as you know, Matt, comes in a lot of different categories. It’s packaged in different ways. I suppose one key way is just having a false assurance of salvation, making you think that your life is right with God. Just before I came into my study here, spoke to a man in the driveway who thought he was saved but clearly was not because being good enough won’t get you into heaven. Satan deceives with moral compromise, he’ll make us think, well sin it’s not that bad. You’re missing out if you don’t have it. He does it through false teachers, he does it through cultural pressure, through half-truths and primarily through doctoral apostasy where there’s false gospels that are presented. And Jesus spoke of this in Matthew 13, but those are a few ways
Sam Rohrer:
Ladies and gentlemen, you have, you just joined us. Our theme today is identifying and avoiding deception. Ever been deceived? Are you being deceived? How can you identify deception? And then what can we do about it to avoid it? We’ll talk about that today since Jesus warned against being deceived. Matthew 24, 4, we mentioned that a couple of times in the last segment. If you’re just joining us, we’re talking about deception, identifying and avoiding deception. Today, pastor Matt Recker from New York City is my co-host and our special guest, recurring guest is Dr. Carl Broggi, senior pastor of Community Bible Church in Beaufort, South Carolina. This is a theme in a subject and believe that touches, I don’t believe I know, touches all of us, but Jesus warned against it because it was so very important and as it was defined before, it really means it’s a state of being led away from the truth and it’s dangerous and in fact, deadly as we know it was for Eve.
And because she was deceived, it came upon then all of creation. So all of creation now today groans under the weight of sin that came about as a result of deception, her being deceived and embracing it. So if we’re going to be successful in identifying and avoiding deception and being led astray from God’s truth, it makes sense to understand the causes and the sources of deception. How does it work? From where does deception actually come? What is the cause or perhaps the causes? Now Carl, before we go into the causes and the sources of deception from a scriptural perspective, that’s where we learn about it. I want to ask you this, what part of our human structure as created by God as a human being, what part of our being is the target of deception? In other words, where does the source of deception target Its deceptive allure because deception is always alluring. That’s what makes it so successful. That’s
Carl Broggi:
A great question. Well, as you know Sam in scripture, the mind, the heart, the will, the emotions are all interconnected. Sometimes you’re used to describe the same thing, but I would say if I had to pick one, the battleground starts in the mind what we think as a man thinks in his heart. So he becomes, and so Paul warns in two Corinthians about the serpent who deceived eve by his craftiness and he warned, he said, I’m afraid that your minds should be led astray by the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ. Paul Exhorts in Romans one or not exhorts, but teaches in Romans one about those who are drifting from God. And he said, for although they knew God, knew God and that he’s the creator, all men know that they didn’t honor him as God, but they became futile or useless in their thinking.
There’s the mind. And so their hearts became darkened. There’s the connection to the two. Paul warns about being taken captive by philosophy and empty deceit. There’s our word deceit this morning. So the first off I would say is the mind. That’s where it starts. And the heart joins in and sometimes the heart is described as the mind and the mind is the heart and they’re used interchangeably. But Jeremiah, when he summarizes our heart, he says the heart is deceitful above all things. So you meet people sometimes and they say, I just follow my heart. Well, the heart is calibrated to something and the scripture speaks in Hebrews about being hardened in your heart by deceitfulness of sin. And so the mind believes a lie. The heart desires what God doesn’t want us to have, and then the will acts on it. And that’s James one. When a person is tempted and lured and enticed by his own desire, and very often that deception enters through the senses, through the emotions. And so in Genesis, the woman saw that the tree was good for food, a delight to the eyes. And so John speaks of the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh and the pride of life. And so the heart, the mind, the senses, the will, the emotions are all emphasized in scripture as potential sources that can lead us into deception.
Matt Recker:
Great answer, Carl. So now can you identify for us as well, what are the sources of deception and the causes of deception that do target the heart, the mind, and the senses as you so well explained there in particular then how is a person targeted to accept a lie instead of the truth and then to become deceived?
Carl Broggi:
Yeah, so in our new Christians class, it’s called basic discipleship. I have it online, but we talk about three forces that wage war against the believer, the world, the flesh and the devil. And so the world’s system, according to Ephesians two, when we’re dead in our trespasses and sins, Paul says, you walked formally according to the course of this world, that was according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit referring to Satan in his work that’s working in unbelievers, the sons of disobedience. And so there’s this world system that Satan energizes. He is working, he’s structuring it, and so he doesn’t have to directly attack us. He can just create a philosophy in the world that we live in that we’re lured away to. And that’s why Paul says, don’t be conformed to the world. Be transformed through the renewing of your mind.
Paul speaks in second Corinthians four, four of the God, that small G of this world who’s blinded the minds of the unbelieving. So there’s the world, there’s the flesh. The flesh is the sin nature. And so I just referenced a moment ago the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life. And so the lust of the flesh refers that fallen nature within that capacity that we have to do what is wrong that we inherited from Adam because we sinned in and with Adam. And the lust of the eyes is not so much dealing with doing as it is having, it’s that appetite for sin. And we even use it that way in English. Feast your eyes upon that. And then in addition, there’s a boastful pride of life and that has as much as anything to do with having. So there’s the world, there’s the sin nature within that intersects the world system that Satan is conspiring to form and create and energize and there’s the devil himself. And so the devil will very often maybe target, say one movie producer who is going to produce a movie that’s going to be seen by millions of people energizing the world to feed the flesh, to carry people away from the truth. And so they all intersect with each other. And so we’re exhorted not to have our minds let astray.
Sam Rohrer:
Okay, Carl, that’s great. Now let’s go to that a little bit deeper on that. There is a verse in Isaiah where it talks about the pride of thine heart hath deceived thee. We know that God hates pride. We know that pride goeth before a fall. There is a sense that if in our pride we can become God probably a little bit of a thought that was put before Eve as she saw she took, but she was imagining something. Go a little bit deeper into the element of pride and then other places that we could see perhaps or come into contact with deception.
Carl Broggi:
So pride deceives the heart. It distorts the way you think about yourself, about God, about others and the truth. And in the process it blinds us to what God has for us. It’s says self-deception. So you quote Obadiah, I love the book of Aya. The only sermon I’ve ever heard in the book of Aya is the one I preached. It’s a kind of a forgotten book, but you reference it. And so in the opening verses he says, the pride of your heart has deceived you. And so pride deceives us. The heart is deceitful above all else who can understand it. And so the solution to pride is the fear of the Lord. The fear of the Lord is to hate evil, pride in arrogance. God says, I’ll hate Proverbs will say, don’t be wise in your own eyes, but fear the Lord and turn away from evil.
And so wisdom in your own eyes is a source of pride that we think we’re a big shot, that we’re smarter than God is. And so we follow after our own dictates. And God hates pride. Pride is what made the devil the devil. Pride is what made Eve fall into the deception to be like God. Pride is never a temptation to fall down. It’s a temptation to fall up to be like God. And that’s what Satan does. He packages something in a way that we think is better than what God offers. And that’s why our heart has to be calibrated to scripture or will be easily deceived.
Sam Rohrer:
That’s excellent and we’re going to get more into it in the final segment about the deterrent, but in a broad sense as we go about life, what sends up red flag first perhaps, but how do we smell or sense that we are in the presence of deception, either something that we’re hearing, something that we’re seeing. How would you answer that?
Carl Broggi:
Well, the only way we can have that discernment is first we have to know the Bible. Second, we have to be filled with the spirit and we have to be obeying what we know. And as we obey what we know, Hebrews says, we have our senses trained to discern good from evil. And so this is why Satan has done everything in his power to remove expository preaching out of the Bible. And he has sold thousands of young pastors through guys like Bill Hybels and Rick Warren and I make no apology using their names because they have diluted a lot of young men in the ministry and people wanted, oh, these mega churches. And where I would often say you might have a pastor who’s faithfully opening the word of God and shepherding 50 people and God is more pleased with his ministries than some guy who has some mega church of thousands of people because one is opening the word of God, he’s using the tool of the word of God to build the church. And that’s why God says, be careful what materials you use, wood, hay, stubble, gold, silver, precious stones. It’s in the context whether you use the wisdom of the world, which is what they offered versus the wisdom of God, which is the word of God.
Sam Rohrer:
Alright, excellent. Ladies and gentlemen, we’re going into right in the middle of the program here. Now our theme, identifying and avoiding deception. Hopefully you’ve heard some things already that have been helpful, but the more discerning we are about the word of God, the more discerning we will be in identifying and then avoiding deception, which Jesus told us, take heed but you don’t be perceived. Well if you’re just joining us perhaps, and many do because when you listen to the radio and this is an hour program, I know distractions come some things, you tune in, you tune out. I want you to know that this program on a very important theme, deception, you’ve all encountered it. I know we all have. It’s possible that we can deceive ourselves. It’s definitely true that all around us there are deceptions of all types to the extent that it is extraordinarily difficult sometimes to actually know what is true.
And we’re trying to lay all these things out here today. So you can pick up this program and the transcript, go back and listen to it again or read what is being said. You can pick it up on our website at stand in the gap radio.com or on our app if which if you’ve not downloaded, please do. It’s so convenient to be able to listen to all these programs, to communicate and to participate, not just in prayer but financially. Now moving on, when considering further deception, which we’ve now defined, talked about the source of it, the only conclusion is, is that deception is always dangerous from the embracing of the serpent’s lie to eve, which we’ve talked about according to one Timothy two 14, it says Eve was deceived, but the same verse also said Adam was not deceived, he just voluntarily chose to sin.
That’s why by one man, sin came into the world. Now we’re not going to get into that component piece, but here’s what the verse says. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman eve being deceived was in the transgression. But from that event where they both entered into it, we are now in a world of sin, born with a depraved heart from birth, and we are in a world that is in every way running from the truth, which is God and deception is how it happens. So in the end, being deceived and embracing the lie, it ultimately comes down to a choice. We can choose to believe a lie and therefore experience the consequences of a bad choice. Or we can identify the deception and avoid it by choosing not to forsake the truth for a moment of perhaps fleeting pleasure or choose deception perhaps as a result perhaps of fear.
But if deception in lies were so obvious, they wouldn’t be deception. So how can we identify deception and the deceivers who deceive? Alright, now Carl, I’d like to ask you and the three of us in this segment will share what’s coming to our mind. I don’t know what you’re all going to say, but I’d like to go first on this and that is this. Would you identify what you personally consider to be the greatest or perhaps one of the greatest examples of deception in our current day? Something that you regularly encounter that you see that disturbs your heart when you’re focused on truth and why is it so concerning to you and if not identified this area of deception and avoid it, the danger that it will bring or is bringing. So kind of flesh that out a little bit and then go to Matt on this.
Carl Broggi:
Wow, that’s a challenging question. I guess if I had to put it in a single sentence, I would say the biggest single deception that I’m seeing in our day is fake worship, tainted by filthy minds that become the soil for false teaching. Now by fake worship, I’m talking about churches even under the banner of evangelicalism that is rooted in emotionalism where people go to the church, why did you go to that church? I like the way that church made me feel. And there’s almost like a spiritual quote buzz that they’re looking for in that they’re not really worshiping the living God, they’re worshiping themselves in the feeling they get. And Jesus said, we are to worship in spirit and in truth. And when you add to that filthy minds, and that’s the biggest challenge for Christians today, they have to make choices and they hold in their hand a little computer, it called a cell phone.
And there is so much filth that Christians are filling their minds on. And in the end you have to have a filter over your own heart. You have to make choices about what you set in your mind. But when you have those two combined together under the banner of a church, it’s the perfect environment for false teachers and false teaching. And that’s the day that we live in. And God warns us of such things. He always says, put these things apart, these filthy things so that you can take in the word of God in a clean heart. So I would say in a single sentence, that’s probably what I see as a major, major deterrent and challenge today.
Sam Rohrer:
That was well expressed. I’ll come back. We have time to comment. Matt, let me go to you. Same thing. What area where are you seeing deception impact people that is of greatest concern perhaps or one of the greatest concerns for you? And what is the danger of whatever it is you’re going to say?
Matt Recker:
The first thing I thought, Sam, when you asked that question, my mind went right to Second Corinthians chapter 11, where Paul writes about how he feared that as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtlety. So our minds would be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ. And that word simplicity speaks of the bounty, the generosity, the liberality, and having the singleness of mind and heart that Christ is sufficient. Then Paul goes on to say that people had received and had accepted another Jesus, another gospel and another spirit, which is really not another. I think that’s the main deception because of foundationally people receive the simplicity, the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ, know who he is, know what he’s done, then they wouldn’t be deceived by the cults, the false religions, because ultimately the devil wants to deceive people from believing in the true gospel, the true Christ by the true Holy Spirit. Sam, I ask you, what do you think? How would you answer that question yourself?
Sam Rohrer:
Okay, this is how I’m thinking. I find it interesting in hearing both of you because you’re saying similar things, but slightly different. But it does center down on how the truth about God is being substituted and how people are being enticed to believe something other than the true gospel or Carl, as you said, actually embrace fake worship and to walk away thinking in fact that they had worshiped. And that’s interesting and that’s from your perspective. Now, here’s one that I thought of that I am confronted with and to some extent this is a little bit from my experience I guess, and my calling in the past, not just preaching, but I’ve not been a pastor as you two gentlemen are, but I’ve been in office, this is where I note it would be this area that is where people believe that what God said regarding, I’m going to say peace and safety and prosperity is not really true and that because we’re here in America, I’m centering it this way and that God works differently with America than he did with Israel.
Now what I mean by that is this, God told Israel as a nation you want to be blessed. Do you want to have good health? Do you want to have wealth and security? Do you want to have respect from the nations around you? And they did. He said, all right then here’s what you have to do, fear of me and keep my commandments. But if you throw me off through the pride of your heart, embrace other idols and you don’t do my commandments, everything’s going to turn upside down. You’re going to lose it all. To me, it seems a little bit men like we as Christians in America think that America is somewhat different than Israel or any other nation, and that God just certainly would not cease to have things here the way they have always been. And the tendency is then to believe human leaders, that they offer more hope for continued peace and prosperity than God and obedience to God’s commands. There’s something, there’s an element in there. Lemme go back to you right now, Carl, given an overall sense of now we’ve all shared some ideas, give some concluding thoughts I guess on all these,
Carl Broggi:
Oh, this is why it’s essential, Sam, that there are elders in a church who are qualified, men who are discerning. When Paul spoke to the Ephesian elders, he said, look, after I leave savage, wolves are going to come in. They’re not going to spare the flock. They’ll come in from among your own self. They’ll come in from inside the church and they’ll speak perverse things and draw away the disciples. And so you see illustrations and warnings of that, especially in two Peter two and the book of Jude. They come in, they talk like a Christian, walk, like a Christian, but they’re really not. And as Matt just highlighted from two Corinthians 11, in that chapter, there’s false apostles, deceitful workers. They disguise themselves as apostles of Christ. No wonder he says even Satan disguises himself. Therefore, it’s not surprising if his pastors, his ministers, his elders also disguise themselves as servants of righteousness. And this is why we need to know the word of God. We need to be discerning. We need to be walking in the fullness of the spirit where God, the Holy Spirit is able to illuminate the truth of the scripture so that we can have discernment in guarding and protecting his people.
Sam Rohrer:
And that brings us right up to a break. Ladies and gentlemen, how do you think you’re doing in the area of deception? Are you deceived? Are you deceived, perhaps by fake worship, deceived by a filthy mind, deceived by making the gospel complicated as Matt said or deceived into thinking and waking up each morning, we’re looking to the news, what something is happening in Washington thinking that in reality more hope comes from Washington than it does from obedience to God. Any of those hearings we will talk about now in the last segment, the biblical deterrent. Alright, all right, we’re going into our final segment now. If you perhaps not caught the entire program from its beginning, I would strongly, strongly urge and encourage you to go back and listen to the program. You can get it on our app Stand in the Gap or on our website standing the gap radio.com.
You can have access to a transcript. But there was a lot of gold nuggets already stated in this program on this important area of deception. And we’ve chosen to do this today because it is all around us. We are all being enticed to believe a lie. We’ve seen it the past four years in a monumental global fashion. We experienced it every day. If you hold a phone in your hand, which almost everybody does, or you’re on social media, you are absolutely, we are absolutely being bombarded with fake everything, meaning deception. It’s not real even to the people that we are seeing on these things that we think may be an interview or a commentary by somebody and relating a personal example, we get all excited about it and we shove it along to our friends. We find out later it was an absolute total manufactured lie creation.
Artificial intelligence is just doing an immense amount in the distortion of truth. So where it’s all around us. But Jesus said that these days would come. He didn’t say ai, he didn’t say specific things. He just said that the spirit of rejection of truth and the embracing of a lie, deception would be way up there in front. Big item couldn’t run away from it. And he just said, don’t be deceived. So that leads us to this. Is it possible not to be deceived? Carl, I want to ask you that question. And in every reality, when I asked you earlier from where did it come, you talked about the mind and the heart. That’s an internal, and I want to go there first, but then there’s the world around us, the things I just described, but’s external. So let’s break it down a little bit. I’m going to ask you the internal and then Matt, I’ll come back with the external. Let’s go on the internal part of it since we know for instance that pride, the heart, the mind, these things that you described earlier actually create or cultivate the ground to be, I guess to accept a deception. What deterrent does scripture offer? Where would you take us to help identify and then avoid this internal source of deception?
Carl Broggi:
Well, you quoted earlier, Obadiah that the pride of your heart has deceived you. So pride is a driving force behind all deception. And the counterforce is the fear of the Lord. The fear of the Lord is to hate evil, pride and arrogance. God says, I hate. And so the starting place to hate evil is not to be conformed to this world, but to be transformed through the renewing of our mind. So if a believer is serious, he can’t have a casual relationship to the Bible. And we live in a day when the average Christian, in my judgment, spends more time on social media than they do in the word of God. And they’re not going to make it in this culture, not if they’re saved, of course are eternally secure. But in terms of having an impact for Jesus Christ, they are really soiling the middle 10th of our salvation, what we call sanctification.
James will say, receive with meekness or gentleness, the implanted word which is able to save your souls. And of course he has just spoken of the word of God as like an imperishable seed, as Peter uses the phrase to bring about a second birth. Now he’s speaking of the middle tense of salvation with meekness, and he’s just said, put away all this filth and then with meekness, receive God’s word that assumes you’re in it. And God resists the proud. The Bible says He gives grace to the humble. Paul will say, as you’ve received Christ, Jesus the Lord. So walk in him. How do we receive him? Well, we came in a sense of spiritual bankruptcy. We admitted that we could not earn our salvation. We could not merit it. We couldn’t be our own savior, and we trusted the death bear in the resurrection. What gave us that revelation, the word of God.
And so the word of God and the Spirit of God are the two parents to bring about conversion. Likewise, the word of God and the spirit of God are the two means that God uses to bring about our sanctification. So like newborn babes, we need to long for the pure milk of the word so we can grow and respect to our salvation and what James just said. And that saving we’re to clothe ourselves with humility, to clothe yourself with humility. It’s an interesting verb. It was used of a slave who tied on an apron. I’m sure Peter maybe had in his mind when Christ in that upper room tied on that apron and got down as the Lord of all glory and washed their feet. And so if we’re walking in humility, because again, in the sanctifying tense of our salvation, God gives grace to the humble, but resists the proud.
So they’re saving grace and they’re sanctifying grace. And we need to walk in humility. And if we’re not serving the people of God, we’ve diluted ourselves in the thinking that we’re walking in humility. And Micah will say, what does the Lord require That you do justice, love, kindness, and walk humbly with your God. And so the word of God and the spirit of God, we have to be dependent upon the Holy Spirit. Pride says, I’ve got this, I can do this. I’ve got the skill. I’ve got the experience where the scripture would say no apart from me. Jesus said, you can do nothing. And he’s speaking in the context of the spirit of Christ who will come as our helper. And so Paul will say, walk by the spirit why that you might not gratify the desires of the flesh. We live in an evil day. The day was predicted. Paul describes the last days that started with Christ, time on earth. But when he describes the last days in Titus, or actually in two Timothy chapter three, he’ll then say, but evil men and imposters will proceed from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. So it’s going to grow, it’s going to multiply. And this is why we need the spirit of God and the word of God to walk down that narrow path that God has ordained for us to walk in as Ephesians two 10 underscores.
Matt Recker:
That’s excellent. Thank you, Carl. We know that deception as you just so well described, can come internally, but it can also come externally. That is from any person, whether a parent to a child, a child to a parent, a neighbor to neighbor, or from someone in position of authority in government, or even from the pulpit to a person. And we even know we’re in this month that they call pride month. And it’s so amazing that they could just say pride. And people embrace what God says is so dangerous. Yet that’s the culture that we’re living in where pride, which leads to deception is embraced. So what would you say would be the most effective deterrent to overcoming the deception that is coming from these external sources, even from culture itself?
Carl Broggi:
Yeah, I often use a phrase my wife does as well. And we say, when you obey what you know, you will grow. Now that assumes certain things. That brings us back to scripture. It affirms that you are depending on the spirit because without him we can do nothing. But I’m thinking of Hebrews five where Paul, the writer of the Hebrews, it wasn’t Paul, we don’t know who it was, but whoever it was that God used to write that book, he said, you should have grown by now, but you’re like babies. He said, for by this time, because it takes time to grow. You ought to be teachers, but you have need again for someone to teach you the ABCs, the elementary principles of the Oracles of God. And you’ve come to need milk and not solid food. And then he’ll say that everyone who partakes only of milk is not accustomed to God’s righteousness. He’s a babe. Solid food is for the mature who, because of practice, they’re obeying what they know. And so they have their senses trained to discern good and evil. So discernment. While it may be a spiritual gift, it is a common responsibility every believer has, and it comes by obeying what we know and then we can walk in this dark world in holiness.
Sam Rohrer:
Ladies and gentlemen, are your senses being exercised and trained to be discerning by focusing on God’s word in authority, fearing him, keeping his commandments, that goes to the heart of identifying and avoiding deception. Dr. Carl Broggi, thank you so much for being with us today. Matt Recker from New York City, thanks for being on again as well. And ladies and gentlemen, thank you for being a part of the program. Go to our website, listen to this program again, then share it with a friend.
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