Sermons of the Serpent.Pastoral Defense Against Dark Ideas
Thirty things people actually say — in your lobby, on X, maybe in your own head — and the ism hiding underneath each one. This is your defense against dark ideas: learn to hear the serpent’s cadence, name the lie, and answer it from Scripture.
Get instant access.
Get started in 30 seconds.
Every sermon of the serpent
is one of three lies.
1. The explicit word, questioned
Authority moves inside the self. Truth stops being objective and becomes whatever I perceive it to be.
2. Man as arbiter
You become the creator and interpreter of your own truth and your own reality.
3. No consequences
No judgment now, none in eternity. You become the executor of your own judgment.
Stop reacting. Start discerning.
Where most pastors are
- ×Someone says “I have church hurt” or “pastors shouldn't be paid” in the lobby, and you don't have a ready answer.
- ×Ideas reach your people before you can name them — on X, in podcasts, in a small group.
- ×You can feel something's off in a phrase, but you can't say what's underneath it.
- ×Deconstruction, universalism, and the social gospel are walking off with people you love.
- ×You either let it all slide, or you go to war on everything.
Where this course takes you
- ✓Thirty sayings named, each with the ism underneath it defined in plain language.
- ✓The “did God really say?” each ism asks — so you hear the cadence, not just the words.
- ✓A pastoral answer for every one, grounded in Scripture and church history.
- ✓A map of the ditches: licentiousness to hedonism, legalism to cultism, defeatism to nihilism.
- ✓A course that ends with you — “Surely not I” — so it never becomes a heresy-hunting manual.
Defense against dark ideas
starts with the cadence.
The serpent rarely speaks for himself.
His last recorded direct speech is in the wilderness. After that he speaks through people — Judas at the table, Peter saying “never, Lord.” You won't hear a hiss. You'll hear a reasonable question from someone you love.
Every ism starts with “did God really say?”
Question the explicit. Start with complicated, tertiary matters. Then move to the primary ones the councils already settled. That's the deconstructionist technique — and once you see it, you can stop it at step one.
It always comes back to authority.
Man as the genesis of truth, the interpreter of truth, and the executor of judgment — man as God. Get the question of where authority lies right, and you also get the right lens for reading Scripture.
Defense, not heresy hunting.
Some of these are ditches, some are roads toward apostasy, and some are mass apostasies happening now. The goal isn't throwing stones — it's guarding your people, and your own heart, while you stay on the gospel and the Great Commission.
30 sayings. 30 isms.
Every lesson is titled with what people actually say. The ism underneath is named, defined, and answered — from epistemology, through grace and its ditches, to the pastor's own heart.
“If God is real, then prove it”
ConditionalismThe first wilderness temptation, the examiner’s chair, and why suffering proves the opposite of what the skeptic thinks.
3 min“What’s true to me is true to me”
RelativismFeet firmly planted in thin air. How kindness replaced truth as the highest value, and why that stops all progress.
4 min“Nobody can tell me what to do”
PluralismThe unmasked version is "I am my own god." Why self-sovereignty creates chaos it can’t solve.
4 min“There are many paths to God”
UniversalismMany roads up the mountain? This one mirrors "surely you will not die," and it quietly kills evangelism.
3 min“My group identity determines what is true”
IdentitarianismEvery tribe and tongue, but no tribe-specific gospel. The recurring move of putting identity above Christ.
2 min“I’m more loving than God”
DeconstructionismThe ladder: Paul from Jesus, Jesus from His words, then a new Jesus. Why the millstone warning applies.
5 min“My actions don’t have consequences”
LicentiousnessThe first ditch beside the road of grace. Freedom inverted, and why "holiness doesn’t save you" is only half the sentence.
4 min“I need to do these things to be right with God”
LegalismThe other ditch. Soteriology versus sanctification, and the difference between conviction and condemnation.
4 min“If it feels good, do it”
HedonismCorinth had the same slogan. Paul quotes it back and asks two questions: is it beneficial, and has it mastered you?
4 min“If I don’t do this, God doesn’t love me”
CultismCults aren’t always weird. Often it’s leaving the Nicene Creed and making secondary things salvific.
5 min“I have church hurt”
Neo-MarxismReal hurt is real. The line is individual accountability versus institutional demolition.
7 min“I don’t trust pastors”
DisunityThe scandal economy, projection, and the moment distrust becomes divisiveness and a case for discipline.
7 min“We co-pastor”
Hyper-feminismA case for complementarian governance made on hermeneutics, not gender, with respect for both camps.
5 min“There’s always a middle ground”
Third wayismWhat Keller meant by "third way," how it got retconned, and why nuance should lead to a destination.
4 min“Who’s really behind this…?”
ConspiratorialismEndless genealogies and myths, the eschatology books, and a first-principles view every camp can sign.
4 min“I’m against every war”
PacifismJust war theory, what "turn the other cheek" means, and why this cuts against neocons too.
5 min“We don’t take hard stances here”
Purposeful ambiguityA church-growth tactic that became a bait and switch. Where there’s ambiguity there are no testimonies.
6 min“Share the gospel at all times; if necessary, use words”
Social gospelHow can they hear without a preacher? When eternal justice goes, social justice takes its place.
6 min“We’ll do anything short of sin to grow the church”
Hyper-pragmatismPlenty of things short of sin we still shouldn’t do. What happens when you scale a low bar.
6 min“Small churches are better than big churches”
Micro-churchismRomanticizing the un-ideal. Why limiting the church to my span of care is low vision.
7 min“The church was better back when…”
NostalgismHymns, the organ, the good old days. When was the church most pure?
6 min“I’m in it not to win it”
DefeatismThe church loses and it all gets worse, so why plant, grow, or convert? Christ is victorious.
6 min“What does it matter?”
NihilismWhere defeatism ends up, and why the black pill feels more like relief than a high.
4 min“This money could be used for something else”
CriticismJudas versus the alabaster jar, and the catalog of what every pastor hears.
3 min“You can’t do that, Jesus”
CongregationalismPeter’s "never, Lord," a denomination voting against God’s word, and the centurion who understood authority.
4 min“Pastors shouldn’t be paid”
AnarchismIt isn’t a pay debate. It’s a denial that the church has any legitimate structure.
4 min“If you really believed that, you wouldn’t do this”
CynicismThe serpent quoting Psalm 91 at the temple pinnacle, Alinsky’s rule four, and comedy versus cynicism.
4 min“I’m amazing and everyone else sucks”
HubrisNebuchadnezzar on the roof, the third temptation, and the pastor nobody on staff can say no to.
4 min“I would never do that”
Exceptionalism"Surely not I, Rabbi?" Galatians 6, the Billy Graham rule, and being home more than you’re gone.
4 min“Kill yourself”
DespairThe serpent’s final, unrecorded saying. Judas and Peter both failed, and only one stayed on the board.
4 minSurely Not I
Thirty lessons about other people’s errors. Now say it about yourself.
2 minHear it. Name it.
Answer it.
Thirty-two short lessons — most under six minutes. Watch them in order, or jump straight to the saying you're hearing in your church right now.
Get instant access — freeJon-Michael Sherman
Jon-Michael Sherman is a former ARC & CMN church planter, lead pastor, executive pastor, and church-builder who has spent the last decade helping pastors break through every kind of growth ceiling — from launch teams to multi-site campuses.
He's the author of Elite Preaching and Pastoral Intelligence, and the founder of PastorCenter.com and SpiritualGiftsPlus. Sermons of the Serpent comes out of two decades of watching these ideas take good pastors out — and the conviction that in a confused age, a pastor's first defense is knowing where authority lies.
A defense against dark ideas — not another hot take.
For the lobby, the pulpit, the comment section, and your own heart.
You'll also see the tool that keeps your preaching anchored to the text.
Pastor Center Sermons runs deep research on any passage — original languages, historical context, cross-references, commentary — and drafts in your own voice. The course teaches you to hear the serpent. Sermons helps you answer from the text, every week.
Know the Holy Spirit
from the serpent.
Sign up once. Watch forever. Learn the cadence, name the ism, and answer it from Scripture — starting with the intro in the next 30 seconds.
Start Sermons of the Serpent free