World Wide Web of Deception

Intro

“I appeal to you, brothers, to watch out for those who cause divisions and create obstacles contrary to the doctrine that you have been taught; avoid them. For such persons do not serve our Lord Christ, but their own appetites, and by smooth talk and flattery they deceive the hearts of the naive.” (Ro 16:17–18).

This was the warning from Paul to the Roman church at the close of his letter. Through Him, God gave a clear warning to his people to be on the look-out for those who deceive, who lead astray, who look like Christians, but are actually not serving Jesus.

As you survey the Bible, you will see that this is not a problem confined to the church in Rome in the early days of Christianity, but this has been a perpetual problem!

God’s people have always been in danger of False teaching, in fact, you could suggest that the fall of humanity was on the basis of false teaching.

Kids, What did the Snake in the Garden of Eden say to Eve?

“Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?”(Ge 3:1). and when Eve responded, Satan cast doubt on what God said, and gave an <scare quotes> “alternate viewpoint”.

“...the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” (Ge 3:4–5).

With this deception, this false teaching, our whole race of humankind has been plunged into the darkness of sin that gives birth to death.

False teaching is a grave danger for each one of us who seeks the LORD. It is a grave danger such that the Prophets of Old regularly warn God’s people, and we are warned also in The Gospels, Acts, Romans, Corinthians, Ephesians, Colossians, letters to Timothy & Titus, one of John’s letters, Hebrews, and Revelation.

It is a resounding refrain from the Scriptures, a clear word from God for you! He gives this word for your health, for your safety, so that your faith will endure to the end.

So today, heed this warning! Watch out for False teachers!

Some of you are young in faith and do not know the reefs out there that will make a shipwreck of your faith! You are naive, and not yet wise to the duplicity and danger that lurks even among those who say they follow God.

This goes for both you who have recently become Chritains, but also you literally young Christians: children. I hope that you’re safe from the danger of false teaching under the guidance of your parents and church family, but one day you will encounter someone teaching a false Gospel - and you will do well to be aware.

This warning is not just for young upstarts with their wild passion and naivety, even when we have laboured long for the Lord among his people, we can become weary and unguarded. Like foolish Agag we think “Surely the bitterness of death is past." (1 Sa 15:32), while the sword is still unsheathed.

As long as you are in the flesh, you are on the battlefield. As long as you are in the flesh, you are running the race. Will you run in vain? To be turned aside into a fake track before you reach the finish line?

Take up your shield of faith, so you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one (Eph 6:16)! Stand firm on the Rock, so that you may be immovable and steadfast in the storm!

There is one Lord, one Faith and One baptism. Yet the enemies of God would destroy it if they could. They proliferate counterfeits and alternatives so as to hide this true faith once delivered to the Saints.

Yet, this should not cause you to fear, dear ones! Jesus Christ will overcome all these dangers! He will protect you! He will lead you to the truth!

But he will not do it through complacency, the tools he uses are things like good teaching and warnings. That is what we are doing here right now, hearing the warning, so that we might be better prepared for the danger we face.

Not talking about this because I heard Parko’s sermon the other week! Or Bruce’s last week!

So where are we going on this topic? Well I’m first going to walk through some key parts of the passage from 2 Corinthians, then I’m going to tease trace out some common false teaching trajectories.

Divine Jealousy

Jealousy is one of those things that is often a sin, because we covet something that is not ours. But there is a proper and good jealousy, the type that God has for his people. I think that is a similar to the Jealousy that Paul talks of here in 2 Cor. He has helped this young church meet Jesus, and be saved, and he is committed to seeing them through the challenges they face to stay faithful to God in Christ Jesus:

2 Corinthians 11:1–2 NIV

I hope you will put up with me in a little foolishness. Yes, please put up with me! I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy. I promised you to one husband, to Christ, so that I might present you as a pure virgin to him.

Paul uses the language of a marriage to highlight the sanctity and exclusivity of the relationship between the Church and Jesus. He helped bring the Corinthians into this good relationship. He was the “matchmaker” so to speak, and and as a Christian himself, Paul has a vested interest in their success. He is “jealous” for them to stick with their true husband, the one they committed to forever!

Yet, why is there jealousy? Jealousy, good jealousy, can only come about when things are out of order. It is when there is faithlessness, or cheating that righteous jealousy comes into play. The Corinthians seem to be showing signs of departing from their true husband.

This in general is why Paul is writing the letter - the context is that there are guys going around claiming to be Super Apostles, a new and better level above the real apostles of Jesus. They were spruiking teaching that turned people aside from the fullness of he true Gospel, so Paul needed to respond, because of divine jealousy.

So too, we who are the inheritors of this same faith, ought to be jelous for one another’s hearts to be faithful to our Lord! We should be a faithful bride, even while we wait for the appearing of our Bridegroom!

Led Astray

So why are the people showing signs of not being faithful?

Is it because there’s a problem with Jesus?

Is there a different God that’s come along that’s better?

Nope. There is deception and mistruth! They are being tricked into believing a counterfeit. It’s a doppelganger, it kind of looks like Jesus, but it’s different.

2 Corinthians 11:3–4 NIV

But I am afraid that just as Eve was deceived by the serpent’s cunning, your minds may somehow be led astray from your sincere and pure devotion to Christ. For if someone comes to you and preaches a Jesus other than the Jesus we preached, or if you receive a different spirit from the Spirit you received, or a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it easily enough.

Paul sees the signs that remind him of Eve - the deceptive words led her astray.

It’s as though someone is replacing their husband with a look-alike, and the wife goes “eh, close enough!” and keeps on living.

When put this way, it is quite astonishing - “you put up with it readily enough”

Just as even (& Adam) were responsible, we too are responsible to guard our minds against lies. Deception has a shared responsibility - the deceiver and the deceived share in it.

Undermine the Underminers

After pressing his case for his own ministry, he returns to the theme of the false teachers, and basically says: I’m not going anywhere. He will press on in truth, knowing it will win the day:

2 Corinthians 11:12–13 NIV

And I will keep on doing what I am doing in order to cut the ground from under those who want an opportunity to be considered equal with us in the things they boast about. For such people are false apostles, deceitful workers, masquerading as apostles of Christ.

Paul keeps on mission. He is not dissuaded from his task, and he will keep going in order to undermine the false teachers. They want to be elevated, but Paul expects that the (and their falsehood) will be cut down.

We too, should continue on unabashed.

Truth will win in the end, don’t be worried.

Paul is frank about who and what the false teachers are. Clarity is good!

He saves very strong language for false teachers. For some reason we have grown afraid of this.

Call them what they Are!

Don’t pull punches. Mealy-mouthed cowardice has been my sin, please forgive me. There’s too much at stake for endless caveats. Every day people march off to their death and we sit here wondering if we’re being too offensive with our words.

We think it unloving to yell at people, and in some circumstances I would agree, yet it is more unloving to sit quiet while they rush headlong to their doom!

Yes lets strategise the best way to communicate this truth, lets take care not to deliberately alienate people, but lets do something! And lets not cloud the truth!

This is life and death, and God’s people have the Gospel of life in their mouths, proclaim it! Call a spade a spade, call sin sin, call righteousness righteousness, call Christ LORD over all, call false teachers deceitful workers, masquerading as apostles of Christ.

Disguised as Angels

Lies often come masquerading as something else. Remember when cigarettes were promoted for their health benefits? Thalidomide was safe for unborn babies?

The sweetness of the lie is what makes it so attractive - the possibility that it could be true, the tantalizing hope that this is really the way things are. And it is mixed with truth, so that it does not seems dangerous.

You can look like anything you like if you put on enough makeup, but it does not change what you look like underneath. Lies have a nice exterior, and are ugly underneath, just like their propagators.

The masquerade is not just from the false teachers. They are following in the footsteps of their father, the devil.

2 Corinthians 11:14–15 NIV

And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light. It is not surprising, then, if his servants also masquerade as servants of righteousness. Their end will be what their actions deserve.

Satan was an angel! He retains some of that essence.

His followers are the same.

There is great judgement for them. They will get what their actions deserve. A comfort to the flock, a terror to the teacher.

False teaching arises in the Church! It is not “out there” away from us. Just as weeds are most damaging in a garden, where we’re trying to grow something else, so false teachers, though they be prolific outside the church, they cause most damage when they come up among us.

The Present Problem

The ancient source: Travelling charismatic personalities.

Historical problems: Institutions/traditions, books, TV personalities.

The primary modern source: Internet (blessing and curse)

Come as angels of light!

Deceive

Make you feel like you’re missing some key knowledge or experience (Remeber Satan & Eve?)

Plays to your passions (having itching ears)

Has dogmatic certainty around disputable matters, or conversely is nebulous, having no real structural form.

Satan will try every which way to lead people astray, so there will be a million false flavours, and only one truth. He is perpetually iterating counterfeits, so be very familiar with the real thing!

Titus 3:10–11 NIV

Warn a divisive person once, and then warn them a second time. After that, have nothing to do with them. You may be sure that such people are warped and sinful; they are self-condemned.

Strains of False Teaching

How many of you will I offend? It is likely that many of us here today have been deceived, or at least tantalized by many of the things we’re about to talk about. You can come talk to me about it, we may need to set a date to talk about it in detail, but don’t wag the finger at me, as much as you search the scriptures for what they have to say.

Worst: Trinitarian heresies - These confuse us on the very nature of God.

Justification missteps - working for Salvation, universal salvation

Particular dangers online:

Gospel+, a.k.a “Gospel, but....”

Gospel+food laws, Gospel+circumscision, Gospel+feasts, Gospel+jewish ideas (remember the Jews outside of Christ are under judgment, do not look to modern day Jewish ideas as a type of special knowledge for Christians. They are blind guides if they are outside Jesus.)

Gospel plus methods, Gospel +

Prosperity Gospel - Jesus will materially bless you if you do or give something (tit for tat, quid pro quo).

Charismatic Chaos

Tongues as a marker of salvation

Perpetually looking for miracles

Chaotic church services not done in accordance with the scriptures

End-times paranoia -

perpetual obsession with reading the times, not the Truth of God.

Often tied up with taking the poetic and figurative language of the bible and trying to apply it literally to the world today.

Remember the Bible was relevant to Christians in the 1st century, and in the 1800’s and today. If you’re reading it in a way that only makes sense because Trump was president in the USA, you’re doing it wrong.

Manosphere, tradwife, etc. -

Our cultural circus has driven many to look for answers in tradition and physisology, but these insights cannot bring life.

There is many truths, like sex differences, the knowledge that a feminist utopia is destructive to men and women, yet the tid-bits of truth and good advice do not make a sound theology. Unless Christ is at it’s core, it is only another charade.

Liberal Christianity

Follow every wind of doctrine. Mealy mouthed.

the type that follows the whims of the culture, either 2 weeks later, or 10 years later. The pattern in politics seems to be that the conservatives are only conserving what the progressives did 10 years ago. Many of the seemingly middling Christian teachers, ministries, etc, are just slow to adopt the current trends and so for a time they seem solid. This is the present trap for the broad evangelical landscape - that we will jump on boad the cultural bandwagon, if not today, then tomorrow.

I’d like to think that everything proclaimed from this pulpit is true and right, but all mere men who enter upon the fateful task of proclaiming the truth and instructing God’s people will have their own weaknesses and misunderstandings. Test everything that you hear, against God’s word.

It is possible to make mistakes without becoming a false teacher.

But it is also possible for people, even myself, to be distracted from the truth.

Our Gospel - the Real Deal.

1 Corinthians 15:3–5 NIV

For what I received I passed on to you as of 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 Cephas, and then to the Twelve.

Watch yourself, exhort each other!

Unify around Christ through his True Gospel. ??

Rest in a Gospel once delivered to the saints.

Hebrews 10:23 NIV

Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful.