Pastor John Ortberg asks us to imagine picking your car up from the shop after a routine tune-up, and the technician says, “This car is in great shape. Clearly you have an automotive genius to take great care of your car.” Later that day, your brakes fail. You find out you were out of brake fluid. You could have died.
You go back to the shop, and you say, “Why didn't you tell me?” The technician replies, “Well, I didn't want you to feel bad. Plus, to be honest, I was afraid you might get upset with me. I want this to be a safe place where you feel loved and accepted.” You'd be furious! You'd say, “I didn't come here for a little fantasy-based ego boost! When it comes to my car, I want the truth.”
Or imagine going to the doctor's office for a check-up. The doctor says to you, “You are a magnificent physical specimen. You have the body of an Olympian. You are to be congratulated.” Later that day while climbing the stairs, your heart gives out. You find out later your arteries were so clogged that you were, like, one jelly doughnut away from the grim reaper.
You go back to the doctor and say, “Why didn't you tell me?” The doctor says, “Well, I knew your body is in worse shape than the Pillsbury doughboy, but if I tell people stuff like that, they get offended. It's bad for business. They don't come back. I want this to be a safe place where you feel loved and accepted.” You'd be furious! You'd say to the doctor, “When it comes to my body, I want the truth!”
Obviously, when something matters to us, we do not want illusory comfort based on pain avoidance. We want truth. (John Ortberg, Loving Enough to Speak the Truth, www.PreachingToday.com).
This is certainly the case when it comes to your car and your body, but even more so when it comes to matters of the soul.
So how do you discern whether someone is telling you the truth? How do you distinguish between truth tellers and fake peddlers of falsehoods, who just want to make you feel good for profit? How do you separate the true teachers from the false, who just want to exploit you for their personal gain. Well, if you have your Bibles, I invite you to turn with me to 2 Corinthians 11, 2 Corinthians 11, where the Apostle Paul contrasts His legitimate authority with the illegitimate authority of the false apostles.
2 Corinthians 11:1-3 I wish you would bear with me in a little foolishness. Do bear with me! For I feel a divine jealousy for you, since I betrothed you to one husband, to present you as a pure virgin to Christ. But I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ (ESV).
Paul feels foolish having to defend his apostolic authority. But he does it, because he feels like a father who has a daughter engaged to be married, and he wants to deliver his daughter to her groom pure and chaste.
Paul was a spiritual father to the Corinthian believers. He had led most of them to faith in Christ, whom the Bible describes as the church’s bridegroom (Ephesians 5:22-32; Revelation 19:6-8). Now, as they anticipate their wedding at Christ’s Second Coming, Paul wants to zealously guard their purity, but they are in danger of going after other “suiters.”
2 Corinthians 11:4 For if someone comes and proclaims another Jesus than the one we proclaimed, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or if you accept a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it readily enough (ESV).
They put up with false teachers, who teach a different Jesus with a different spirit in a different gospel. As such, they are in danger of becoming unfaithful to their true bridegroom, Jesus Christ Himself, because they are being seduced by the smooth talking, so called, “super-apostles.”
2 Corinthians 11:5-6 Indeed, I consider that I am not in the least inferior to these super-apostles. Even if I am unskilled in speaking, I am not so in knowledge; indeed, in every way we have made this plain to you in all things (ESV).
Paul may be unskilled in his oratory—an amateur in comparison to the smooth-talking false teachers—but he speaks the truth. He knows what he’s talking about. And he urges his readers to reject the rival suitors, the so-called “super apostles,” who try to seduce you with their smooth talk. Instead…
FOLLOW ONLY A LEADER, who, like a father, JEALOUSLY GUARDS your pure devotion to Jesus Christ. Welcome only those teachers, who encourage you to remain faithful to Jesus. Listen only to those who teach you to stay true to Christ, even if their speech is unpolished.
Teacher and author Paul Borthwick was on a visit to one of his friends who teaches in Beijing, China. He attended a church with four young men who were new believers thanks to his friend’s ministry. The service was in Mandarin, so Paul understood nothing, but he did think the pastor, a very senior man, seemed a little boring. He was soft-spoken, a little stooped over, and preached without any expressions of excitement or emotion.
At lunch after the service, Paul asked the four young Christians, “Is your pastor a good preacher?”
They exclaimed, “Oh yes! He is a great preacher. He spent many years in prison for Jesus Christ” (Paul Borthwick, Missions 3:16, IVP 2020, page 62; www.PreachingToday.com).
Their measurement of their pastor’s ministry had nothing to do with his speaking ability and everything to do with his encouragement to faithfully follow Jesus by the example of his own life. That’s the kind of leader you follow. That’s the kind of teacher you pay attention to.
Stuart Briscoe preached his first sermon at age 17. He didn’t know much about the topic an elder assigned him, but he did his research until he had a pile of notes and three points, as seemed proper for a sermon. Then he stood before an audience in a British Gospel Hall and preached.
And preached. And preached. He kept going until he used up more than his allotted time just to reach the end of the first point and still kept going, until finally he looked up from his notes and made a confession.
“I’m terribly sorry,” he said. “I don’t know how to stop.” Briscoe recalled in his memoir that a man from the back shouted out, “Just shut up and sit down.” That might have been the end of his preaching career, but those dear folks invited him to preach again the next week. And he continued preaching for seven more decades.
In the process Briscoe became a better preacher… He ultimately preached in more than 100 countries around the world and to a growing church of more than 7,000 people, Elmbrook Church, near Milwaukee Wisconsin.
When Briscoe died on August 3, 2022, at the age of 91, he was known as a great preacher who spoke with clarity, loved the people he preached to, and a had deep trust in the work of the Holy Spirit.
He once wrote: My primary concern in preaching is to glorify God through his Son. I’ve worked hard to preach effectively. But I’ve also learned to trust as well. Farmers plow their lands, plant their seed, and then go home to bed, awaiting God’s germinating laws to work. Surgeons only cut; God heals. I must give my full energy to doing my part in the pulpit, but the ultimate success of my preaching rests in God (Daniel Sillman, “Died: Stuart Briscoe, Renowned British Preacher and Wisconsin Pastor,” Christianity Today, 8-8-22; www.PreachingToday.com).
There is no excuse for sloppy preaching, but you want to follow a leader whose primary concern is to glorify God through His Son. Reject those who try to seduce you with their smooth talk, and follow only a leader, who, like a father, jealously guards your pure devotion to Jesus Christ.
Furthermore, reject those who try to exploit you for profit, and…
FOLLOW ONLY A LEADER, who, like a father, GENEROUSLY CARES for you like his own children. Welcome only those teachers who give rather than take from you. Listen only to those who lift you up rather than weigh you down with demands for more money. That’s how Paul conducted his ministry.
2 Corinthians 11:7-11 Or did I commit a sin in humbling myself so that you might be exalted, because I preached God’s gospel to you free of charge? I robbed other churches by accepting support from them in order to serve you. And when I was with you and was in need, I did not burden anyone, for the brothers who came from Macedonia supplied my need. So I refrained and will refrain from burdening you in any way. As the truth of Christ is in me, this boasting of mine will not be silenced in the regions of Achaia. And why? Because I do not love you? God knows I do! (ESV)
Love gives. It never takes. And so Paul gave his life serving the Corinthians without expecting anything in return.
In the Greek world of Paul’s day, teachers were supposed to make money out of teaching. In fact, the more they made, the more people regarded them.
William Barclay says, “Augustus, the Roman emperor, paid Verrius Flaccus, the rhetorician, an annual salary so large that, judged by today’s standards, he would have been a millionaire” (Barclay, The Letters to the Corinthians, 3rd ed.)—not unlike a lot of TV preachers today.
They make millions of dollars, peddling their wares. Well, Paul bucked the trend. He didn’t make money off his preaching. On the contrary, he refused to charge people, choosing rather to make tents (Acts 18:1-3) or accept donations from other churches to support his ministry.
For this, the false teachers criticized him—“He must not be legitimate,” they said, “because he makes little to nothing from his preaching.
However, a loving father does not lay his burdens on his children. Instead, he sacrifices so that the children might have what they need (Wiersbe, The Bible Exposition Commentary).
The false teachers, on the other hand, are like snake oil salesmen. They make a lot of money peddling a fake solution to people’s problems.
Now, snake oil was a real product in the 19th Century. It was a traditional Chinese medicine that thousands of Chinese migrants brought to the United States in the 1800s. They came to this country in order to find work building the Transcontinental Railroad. They brought with them their families, their culture, and their medicines. One of these was snake oil, extracted from Chinese water snakes, and used to treat arthritis and joint pain.
As word of the healing powers of Chinese snake oil grew, many Americans wondered how they could make their own snake oil, because there were no Chinese water snakes in the American West. So, many healers began using rattlesnakes to make their own versions of snake oil.
It was Clark Stanley, the self-styled “Rattlesnake King,” who successfully capitalized upon this. Stanley traveled across the United States, dressed as a cowboy, and put on shows. In front of a crowd, he would slice open a live rattlesnake and throw it into boiling water, and when the fats of the reptile rose to the surface, he would skim the top and bottle up the oil. Throngs of people lined up at his shows to buy the stuff.
Stanley claimed that he learned about the healing power of rattlesnake oil from Hopi medicine men. In 1893 he and his rattlesnakes gained attention at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Later he went on to establish production facilities in Beverly, Massachusetts and Providence, Rhode Island.
However, there was a problem with Stanley’s product: Stanley's Snake Oil didn't contain any snake oil at all. In 1917, federal investigators seized a shipment of Stanley's Snake Oil and found that it contained primarily mineral oil, fatty oil believed to be from beef, chili peppers, turpentine, and camphor. They charged Stanley for fraudulent marketing and fined him $20 (Kaushik Patowary, “Clark Stanley: The First Snake Oil Salesman,” Amusing Planet, 8-9-22; www.PreachingToday.com).
False teachers are no different. They exploit people, peddling a worthless concoction of false ideas, which at best benefit no one and at worst condemns people to hell. Please, avoid such teachers. Don’t waste your time listening to their lies, no matter how entertaining their rhetoric is.
Instead, follow only a leader, who like a father jealously guards your pure devotion to Christ, and who like a father, generously cares for you. Finally…
FOLLOW ONLY A LEADER, who, like a father, GENUINELY SHOWS you his true self. Welcome only those teachers, who demonstrate authenticity without hiding behind a mask. Listen only to those who reveal who they really are, not masquerading as something they are not. For false teachers are masters at disguise.
2 Corinthians 11:12-15 And what I am doing I will continue to do, in order to undermine the claim of those who would like to claim that in their boasted mission they work on the same terms as we do. For such men are false apostles, deceitful workmen, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ. And no wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. So it is no surprise if his servants, also, disguise themselves as servants of righteousness. Their end will correspond to their deeds (ESV).
Instead of being “super apostles,” as they claim to be, false teachers are “pseudo apostles.” They’re fake, disguising themselves truth tellers. However, their end will reveal who they really are.
The Greek word translated “disguise” literally means “to change the outward form.” And that’s what false teachers do. They change the outside, but there is no change on the inside.
Warren Wiersbe says, “Satan’s workers, like Satan himself, never appear in their true character; they always wear a disguise and hide behind a mask (Wiersbe, The Bible Exposition Commentary).
When officials saw Dustin Nehl pull up to one of the burned-out areas from the recent Los Angeles Palisades fire, they were tempted to wave him through. Nehl was driving a full-size, red fire truck with California plates and American flag decals. He was also wearing bright yellow fire gear.
But a firefighter at the checkpoint noticed something amiss. He urged one of the sheriff deputies to check the so-called “fireman’s” identification. A background check quickly revealed Nehl’s criminal history, which included a five-year stint in prison for arson. They found tools on his truck that could potentially be used in a burglary. And, according to a source within the department, the Northern California Fire Department had decommissioned the truck 30 years previously.
Authorities arrested Nehl, along with his wife, on suspicion of impersonating firefighters and unauthorized entry of an evacuation zone. Nehl was not alone in his attempt to impersonate emergency personnel. The week prior, police arrested a man wearing a yellow firefighter’s outfit and carrying a radio. Prosecutors later announced charges for receiving stolen property, impersonating a firefighter, unlawful use of a badge, and unauthorized entry of a closed disaster area (Tribune News Service, “Oregon man pulled up to Palisades fire with fire engine, offer to help. It was fake, police say,” Oregon Live, 1-22-25; www.PreachingToday.com).
Like those counterfeit firefighters, false teachers impersonate true teachers seeking to help, but they seek only to steal and kill and destroy just like Satan himself (John 10:10). So don’t give them one minute of your time or one penny of your money.
And if you’re not sure about someone, just wait and see, because “their end will correspond to their deeds,” verse 15 says. That is to say, “their disguise will eventually fail, and people will see them for the con artists they really are.”
Like the old Arabic proverb says: A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is lacing up its boots. In other words, a lie can spread fast and far, but eventually the truth catches up and exposes it outright. So just wait and see.
If you want to keep from being deceived, follow only a leader, who, like a father, jealously guards your pure devotion to Christ, generously cares for you, and genuinely shows you his true self.
I’m reminded of a comic strip in which a dog has been drinking out of a toilet bowl. With water dripping from his snout, Fido looks up to tell us, “It doesn't get any better than this!” (Paul Copan, Is God a Moral Monster? BakerBooks, 2011, p. 35; www.PreachingToday.com).
Poor dog! He doesn’t know any better, but you do. Please, reject the toilet water of false teaching, and instead, enjoy the fresh, spring water of God’s pure word.
