Error Message
TCF Sermon
April 19, 2009
Anyone who has used a computer has seen something like this. It’s called an error message. Error messages usually come at the most inopportune times – just when you don’t need such distractions.
There are all kinds of error messages, related to almost anything on your computer. Here are a few more I discovered.
Sometimes error messages just make you angry – why can’t my computer just do what it’s supposed to do? Sometimes, error messages inform you something catastrophic has just happened, or is about to happen.
But all of the time, error messages indicate something is wrong. Your computer is not working properly, or thinking properly. Sometimes it’s a minor error that’s mostly just annoying, but other times that error indicates something quite serious, or it can lead to further complications, and then you really have a problem. It could cause a system crash, and then you’re out of business, at least as far as your computer is concerned.
Sometimes error messages include a code to help diagnose the problem. That got me to thinking. Wouldn’t it be nice if, in life, and in our faith, when something is wrong, and perhaps that wrong means something catastrophic is about to happen, we got some sort of error message, like those that pop up on our computer?
These messages mostly annoy us when they come up on our computer, but sometimes, they save us a lot of grief, because they inform us there’s a problem, before that problem gets bigger.
How about an error message that said to us:
Bad theology! Bad doctrine! Beware!
And how about if there was a code that accompanied that error message, such as a scripture reference.
Well, the Bible is full of error messages. Not errors, mind you. Error messages, much like our computers seem to pop up so often. They’re alerts that tell us to watch out, be alert, something’s wrong. Admonitions to keep our lives in order and running smoothly. Encouragements to pay attention to sound doctrine.
Oh, Bill. Not another message on sound doctrine. Haven’t we heard this before?
Yes, we have. And we’re likely to hear such a theme again. If none of the elders ever preached a message like you’ll hear this morning, we wouldn’t be doing our jobs.
Titus 1:7-9 (NIV) 7 Since an overseer is entrusted with God’s work, he must be blameless--not overbearing, not quick-tempered, not given to drunkenness, not violent, not pursuing dishonest gain. 8 Rather he must be hospitable, one who loves what is good, who is self-controlled, upright, holy and disciplined. 9 He must hold firmly to the trustworthy message as it has been taught, so that he can encourage others by sound doctrine and refute those who oppose it.
So, this morning, I’m doing my job. I’m holding firmly to the trustworthy message, as it has been taught to me. I’m encouraging others by sound doctrine. And maybe doing some refuting of those who oppose it.
1 Timothy 4:16 (NIV) 16 Watch your life and doctrine closely. Persevere in them, because if you do, you will save both yourself and your hearers.
The two go together. Our lives and our doctrines. There’s a stream of thinking in the church called the Emergent Church. One of the problems with their thinking is that they believe orthopraxy – that is, how we practice our faith, is more important than orthodoxy – our doctrine.
But I believe the two are inseparable, and both are vital. As followers of Christ, we might more easily understand this admonition when it comes to our life. We know that we must be on the alert – constantly guarding against sin which can so easily destroy us.
Yet, here we see the apostle Paul encouraging Timothy that he should also watch his doctrine, or teaching, closely.
Let me note that the word save here has nothing to do with his salvation.
(1 Timothy) opened with a description of the false teachers who were causing havoc among the people of God. Paul is telling Timothy that by faithful adherence to a godly life and to the word of God, he will save himself from these false teachings and he will also rescue his hearers from them as well. Believer’s Bible Commentary
So, let’s remember this opening admonition this morning as we move along. “Watch your life and doctrine closely.”
Doctrine is not a popular subject in much of the church at large today. Experience is popular. The manifest presence of God is popular. Many other new things, the latest and greatest moves of God, are popular things drawing people to some churches.
C.S. Lewis in The Screwtape Letters called this phenomenon “Christianity and…” as well as… “The Horror of the Same Old Thing.” In writing to his junior tempter Wormwood, Screwtape writes that:
The real trouble about the set your patient is living in is that it is merely Christian. They all have individual interests, of course, but the bond remains mere Christianity. What we want, if men become Christians at all, is to keep them in the state of mind I call Christianity And…”
Then he cites several examples from the 1940s when this book was first published. Today, those examples might include:
Christianity and conservative politics
Christianity and liberal politics
Christianity and apostles
Christianity and prophets
Christianity and healing or the miraculous.
Not that there’s necessarily anything wrong with these things in and of themselves, but the elevation of these things to a place beyond what they should have in our lives and our faith has the potential to lead us away from what Paul called “our sincere and pure devotion to Christ.” It becomes Christianity and…
Then, Lewis writes:
The horror of the Same Old thing is one of the most valuable passions we have produced in the human heart, an endless source of heresies in religion. The humans live in time, and experience reality successively. To experience much of it, therefore, they must experience many different things. In other words, they must experience change.
The enemy of our souls knows our human nature, and thus takes advantage of this part of us. So change, new things, are exciting. But doctrine – not so much. Doctrine seems dry and boring. Doctrine seems confining. Why, some might ask, can we not just pursue Jesus, love Jesus, and not worry so much about doctrine? Can’t we just love Jesus and serve Him?
In answer to this question, the first thing we have to note is the importance of foundations. Upon what is our faith built? Upon what do we base our love for God? Where do we learn the things we need to know to be saved? How do we learn what God wants of us? How do we learn what pleases Him? How can we know God better? How do we learn the truth? Jesus prayed to His heavenly Father in John 17:
John 17:17 (NIV) 17 Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth.
Sanctification is the process of making us into the image and likeness of Christ. But here, Jesus is asking God to change us by the truth – what we learn, what we think.
We see a similar idea presented in Romans:
Romans 12:2 (NIV) 2 Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed (my note: HOW?) by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is--his good, pleasing and perfect will.
I’m not discounting in any way the activity of the Holy Spirit here at all. Jesus also said this:
John 16:13 (NIV) 13 But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come.
So, the Holy Spirit does guide us into truth. But, back to John 17, and just in case there’s any question – even in the context of His prayer, Jesus tells us where this truth is found. It’s found in God’s Word. Jesus said your Word is truth. This book. It’s the starting point, the foundation, the bottom line, for all we believe.
Matthew 7:24-27 (NIV) 24 "Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. 25 The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. 26 But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. 27 The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash."
Note that Jesus said those who hear His words, and put them into practice. It’s both/and, not either/or. We have to hear His words. We have to know His Word – that’s doctrine. And all we believe, our doctrine, should clearly impact how we live – we must put it into practice.
Thinking back to the passage in 1 Timothy, what we believe is our doctrine – how we live is our life. This is a critical starting point. What is our authority, our foundation? Where do we find this authority?
If our authority or our starting point is what we think on our own, or what we want, or what we feel, or it’s guided by our experience alone, or our desire for new things, we’re in a dangerous place.
Even if we think that what we want is guided by the Holy Spirit, even if we think that what we feel is directed by the Holy Spirit, apart from the foundation of the Word of God, our primary source for His truth, we - are
prone - to error.
If we cannot agree on this much, we’ll find little else to agree on from this point on.
That’s because every admonition in scripture, every instruction on how to live our lives, every idea about how to follow God and serve Him, every thought about who God is, about His nature, and how He works, starts with the assumption that the Word of God has authority in our lives.
If it doesn’t have that kind of authority in our lives – and I mean functional authority, in the sense that we search the scriptures for answers, and take seriously, and put into practice what we learn there.
Functional authority, including the example Jim Grinnell gave us several weeks ago, we use God’s love language to love Him – and His love language is obedience – if the Word doesn’t have that kind of authority in our lives, then we’re just making things up as we go along.
We’re just following our own hearts, something that our culture seems to encourage, but Jeremiah 17:9 tells us our hearts are deceitful. If our hearts are deceitful, they can lead us astray.
But the Word of God leads us on the straight and narrow path, and that path is taking us somewhere.
Hebrews 4:12 (NIV) 12 For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.
2 Timothy 3:16 (NIV) 16 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness,
With this as our agreed starting point, next, it’s vital that we note how often scripture warns us about false teaching. Why can’t we just love Jesus and follow Him? Not worry about doctrine? Because we’ve been warned in scripture that we can be deceived.
Here’s just a quick sampling of the dozens of verses we could cite. Listen closely as I read these, bear with me, though I’ve reduced the number I could have used, – I think this is important to get a hint of the scope of these warnings:
1 John 4:1 (NIV) 1 Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.
1 Timothy 6:3-5 (NASB77) 3 If anyone advocates a different doctrine, and does not agree with sound words, those of our Lord Jesus Christ, and with the doctrine conforming to godliness, 4 he is conceited and understands nothing; but he has a morbid interest in controversial questions and disputes about words, out of which arise envy, strife, abusive language, evil suspicions, 5 and constant friction between men of depraved mind and deprived of the truth, who suppose that godliness is a means of gain.
2 Timothy 4:1-4 (NASB77) 1 I solemnly charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by His appearing and His kingdom: 2 preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort, with great patience and instruction. 3 For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires; 4 and will turn away their ears from the truth, and will turn aside to myths.
Titus 2:1 (NIV) 1 You must teach what is in accord with sound doctrine.
Titus 2:6-8 (NASB77) 6 Likewise urge the young men to be sensible; 7 in all things show yourself to be an example of good deeds, with purity in doctrine, dignified, 8 sound in speech which is beyond reproach, in order that the opponent may be put to shame, having nothing bad to say about us.
1 Timothy 1:3-4 (NIV) 3 As I urged you when I went into Macedonia, stay there in Ephesus so that you may command certain men not to teach false doctrines any longer 4 nor to devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies. These promote controversies rather than God’s work--which is by faith.
Romans 16:17-18 (NASB77) 17 Now I urge you, brethren, keep your eye on those who cause dissensions and hindrances contrary to the teaching which you learned, and turn away from them. 18 For such men are slaves, not of our Lord Christ but of their own appetites; and by their smooth and flattering speech they deceive the hearts of the unsuspecting.
Matthew 24:10-11 (NIV) 10 At that time many will turn away from the faith and will betray and hate each other, 11 and many false prophets will appear and deceive many people.
Matthew 24:24-25 (NIV) 24 For false Christs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and miracles to deceive even the elect--if that were possible. 25 See, I have told you ahead of time.
Colossians 2:2-4 (NIV) 2 My purpose is that they may be encouraged in heart and united in love, so that they may have the full riches of complete understanding, in order that they may know the mystery of God, namely, Christ, 3 in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. 4 I tell you this so that no one may deceive you by fine-sounding arguments.
Col. 2:8 See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ.
1 Tim. 6:20 Timothy, guard what has been entrusted to your care. Turn away from godless chatter and the opposing ideas of what is falsely called knowledge,
Matthew 24:4 Jesus answered: "Watch out that no one deceives you.
James 1:16 Don’t be deceived, my dear brothers.
1 John 2:26 These things I have written to you concerning those who are trying to deceive you.
Get the idea? And I could have cited more passages this morning, and I didn’t even look to the Old Testament.
We’ve been duly warned. And if we take the Word of God seriously, if it is, in fact, our foundation for life and doctrine, then we should take these warnings seriously.
One of the challenges in heeding this warning, is that deception can only deceive us if it has at least some resemblance to the real thing. It has to contain some element of truth, or we’re unlikely to be deceived.
“We must realize that the way to deceive people with counterfeits is to imitate the genuine article as closely as possible. For example, if counterfeiters want to pass off fake one-hundred-dollar bills, they do not print Donald Duck’s picture on purple paper. Instead they attempt to duplicate a true bill. Similarly, despicable persons who try to deceive others attempt to appear genuine and sincere. They do not walk up to you and inform you that they are there to deceive and defraud you. The far more effective method is faking friendship and fidelity.” Craig S. Hawkins
So, what this means is that, not only must we have the Word of God as our final authority, not only must we remember we’ve been warned about deception, and thus be on our guard, but we must also learn discernment.
We must learn the right ways to interpret the truths of the Word of God, and believe me, there are right ways to interpret, and very wrong ways. We must be diligent. We have to, I’m sorry to say, work at it.
This is where many people get lost, because in the things of God at least, work has become a four-letter word.
Some people might have a genuine love for the Lord. They might have what we call a genuine zeal for the things of God. And all of us would affirm that.
But the Word of God adds to that commendable zeal:
2 Timothy 2:15 (NIV) 15 Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a workman who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth.
So, the phrase “correctly handling the word of truth” clearly reveals that it also can be incorrectly handled. And workman indicates – well – work. And again, that’s where sometimes we can go wrong.
In our minds, passion is an emotion, an experience, and emotions don’t seem to mix well with the idea of work, or doctrine.
Author Eugene Peterson said:
"It is not difficult in our world to get a person interested in the message of the Gospel; it is terrifically difficult to sustain the interest. Millions of people in our culture make decisions for Christ, but there is a dreadful attrition rate. Many claim to have been born again, but the evidence for mature Christian discipleship is slim. In our kind of culture anything, even news about God, can be sold if it is packaged freshly; but when it loses its novelty, it goes on the garbage heap. There is a great market for religious experience in our world; there is little enthusiasm for the patient acquisition of virtue, little inclination to sign up for a long apprenticeship in what earlier Christians called holiness."
There’s a great market for experience. There’s little enthusiasm for the patient acquisition of virtue.
I’d submit to you that we become virtuous, we attain to holiness, by placing ourselves under the regular influence of the Word of God. And yes, that takes time, and it takes effort. But there’s no substitute for this time and effort. And when we forego that, we are prone to error.
One of the key things we notice in some widespread streams in the church which contain much wrong doctrine, is a dumbing down, a diminishing of God’s authority, and often a corresponding elevation of our authority.
This is especially true when the Word of God is diminished, much as the Emergent Church seems to do. We mentioned this earlier. I’m curious, how many of you have heard this phrase “Emergent Church.” I’m guessing that even those who’ve never heard the label have heard some of the ideas.
Again, this morning, I’m just doing my job as an elder. Today, there’s so much false teaching to dispute, so many choices I could make this morning, we’d be here all day and I couldn’t begin to scratch the surface.
But as Ecclesiastes tells us, there’s nothing new under the sun. So, very briefly, let me illustrate with a few specifics.
We’ve already note The Emergent Church, for example, which seems to have a real problem with the authority of the Word of God. Emergent church leading lights such as Brian MacLaren, Rob Bell, Donald Miller and many others, are so hesitant to call truth truth, or sin sin, that it’s almost impossible to nail down what they believe.
I’ve likened it to nailing jello to a wall – it’s pretty hard to do. They have an almost agnostic way of thinking – they seem to think we cannot truly know anything about God for certain. Certainty is a dirty word to them.
One author writes of his encounter with a successful secular musician. This guy had become a Christian, and played in the worship band at his church. He said something which prompted this author to think of the Emergent Church.
“He told me something I’ll never forget, something that captures the postmodern ethos: In the music scene it’s really cool to search for God. It’s not very cool to find Him.”
Why We’re Not Emergent by Kevin DeYoung, Ted Kluck
Though this musician wasn’t speaking of emergents, this thinking is a hallmark of many Emergent Church thinkers. I’d be unfair to this movement if I claimed they all think alike – they don’t. But for many, their values say that the Christian life is about the journey, and not so much about the destination.
Here’s another example:
The Bells started questioning their assumptions about the Bible itself—"discovering the Bible as a human product," as Rob puts it, rather than the product of divine fiat. "The Bible is still in the center for us," Rob says, "but it’s a different kind of center. We want to embrace mystery, rather than conquer it." "I grew up thinking that we’ve figured out the Bible," Kristen says, "that we knew what it means. Now I have no idea what most of it means. And yet I feel like life is big again—like life used to be black and white, and now it’s in color." The Emergent Mystique – CT article by Andy Crouch
Yes, there’s mystery in our faith – we don’t and cannot fully understand some of the truths in scripture such as the doctrine of the trinity, God’s eternal existence, free will and its relationship to God’s sovereignty.
So, yes, there are many times where we come to the place Paul did after spending several chapters outlining God’s incredible plan for salvation in the book of Romans.
Paul wrote:
Romans 11:33-34 (NIV) 33 Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out! 34 "Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor?"
But it’s a big step from that to “I have no idea what it means.” At first glance, that sounds like humility. But if you think about it, it’s more like agnosticism. That’s essentially the idea, which isn’t new at all, that there are many things we can’t know, we’re incapable of knowing, for certain.
When you apply agnosticism to the Word of God, it undermines the whole of our faith.
Recognizing that we don’t know everything, which I freely admit, does not equate to the idea that we can’t know anything. Just because we don’t grasp all the truth doesn’t mean we cannot know the truth that sets us free. We can understand what we need to understand. And though it’s true that the more I learn, the more I realize I don’t know, it’s also true that I know more now than I did 5, 10, 20 years ago.
The reason I can say that I realize there’s more I don’t know, is because I’ve learned more about the vastness of the riches of God – and that there’s so much more to learn – not that I don’t know anything.
Saying of God’s Word that “I have no idea what it means” is, in fact, just the opposite of what we read in
2 Peter 1:3 (NIV) 3 His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness.
Note that His, God’s, divine power, has given us everything we need for life and godliness through what? Our knowledge of Him.
So, no, we don’t know everything there is to know. But yes, we can learn what we need to know. And those things we don’t need to know, we can entrust to the One who does know.
When you apply this emergent ambiguity to the whole of scripture, you can begin to see where that could lead.
Let me take on one more stream of the church, and it, too, is related to the authority of God and His Word. This group claims the authority of the Word strongly, yet their theology actually demeans the centrality of God and replaces it with a man-centeredness. In fact, about 30 years ago, one of TCF’s first pastors, Chuck Farah, wrote a series of papers and a book exposing the false doctrine in this movement.
We’re talking about the Word-Faith stream of the church, – which would include leaders such as Kenneth Copeland, Fred Price, Benny Hinn, and too many more to name. I’d guess that the vast majority of what you see on TV would fall into this group. It would also include offshoots which emphasize different things – these would include what’s been dubbed the New Apostolic Reformation, in which self-proclaimed apostles and prophets such as Chuck Pierce and Rick Joyner, are working toward a system in which the entire church – independent, denominational, all of them – will eventually come under the leadership of these new apostles.
There are many small groups and churches today which seem to read the latest prophetic proclamations from these men and women, and study them, and give them similar authority or greater authority, than they would to their study of scripture. But they use much of the same false doctrine in which we elevate our authority above God’s – what Chuck Farah called a Man-centered theology.
Dr. Farah wrote:
The emphasis here is on what God can do for man; what the believer can demand and get; what is in it for the Christian. In such a theological framework, where I decide what I want to do, and call God in to get it done for me, it is easy to see how God is reduced to a celestial errand boy… Such an egocentricity can hardly be dubbed Christian. A man-centered theology must ultimately fail, because truth finally triumphs; and the truth is, God is not here for our convenience, we are here for His purposes.
From the Pinnacle of the Temple, Dr Charles Farah
Now, I believe that there can be and are, many sincere believers in either of these streams of the church. But I believe they are sincerely wrong about significant things. Yes, they believe or preach, teach or write some things which are correct, but you cannot balance truth and error.
You don’t. You receive, learn and accept truth. You reject error.
When truth and error seem to come in the same package, remember what we said at the outset about counterfeits. There must be some truth or the counterfeit would not fool us. I see the danger in the logical outcomes of their theological thinking, which has the potential to lead them away from the Lord altogether.
Perhaps the Lord will lead me or one of the other elders to address more about either of these aberrant doctrines or some others, in another message sometime, but for now, I want to close by re-emphasizing where we started and spent the majority of time in this Error Message.
I hope these few illustrations will serve as a wake-up call, as Paul admonished Timothy, to watch your life and doctrine closely. The epistles to Timothy are referred to as the pastoral epistles, so you might think, well, gee, Bill, you’re a preacher – you have to keep up with these things.
Let me say this. We’re all theologians. The only question is whether we’ll be good theologians or bad ones. The only question is whether our doctrine will be sound doctrine or false doctrine. The question is whether or not we will allow the authority of the Word of God to be living and active in our lives, to penetrate our thoughts and our heart attitudes, and become our standard of doctrine and practice, or will we rely on our own feelings and experience to lead us.
Paul wrote this to the Corinthian believers, and it’s something any of us elders could have written to you:
2 Cor. 11:1-15 I hope you will put up with a little of my foolishness; but you are already doing that. 2I 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. 3But 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. 4For if someone comes to you and preaches a Jesus other than the Jesus we preached, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it easily enough. 5But I do not think I am in the least inferior to those "super-apostles." 6I may not be a trained speaker, but I do have knowledge. We have made this perfectly clear to you in every way. … jump to verse 10:
10As surely as the truth of Christ is in me, nobody in the regions of Achaia will stop this boasting of mine. 11Why? Because I do not love you? God knows I do! 12And 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. 13For such men are false apostles, deceitful workmen, masquerading as apostles of Christ. 14And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light. 15It is not surprising, then, if his servants masquerade as servants of righteousness. Their end will be what their actions deserve.
Please, church. I appeal to you, my brothers and sisters in Christ. Please heed the clear warnings of scripture. Please watch your life and doctrine closely. Please keep the Word of God as your authority, so you’ll not give me, or any of the other leaders of this church, reason to fear that you will be deceived by the serpent’s cunning, or that you will be led astray from your sincere and pure devotion to Christ.
Pray
