All of us, as Christians, have been greatly blessed. We have been given a gift that has given us strength, courage, kindness, joy and life. We have been set apart from those who are still constantly searching for things to fill their life with. So many people are looking at material wealth, drinks and drugs to fill a large gap in their lives. So many people now read their horoscopes, new age religions are flourishing, people are willing to experiment with and mix and match new ideas and beliefs. They are seeking spiritual contentment in things that can only cause greater confussion and emptiness. And this confussion is even spreading across into the christian community.
Today there are so called new revelations about Jesus and the Law and ways of interpreting Scripture. Some of these new revelations are dangerous. They are presented using modern marketing techniques, they are attractive to the young. Today’s youth have not received a good grounding in Scripture at school. They are open targets for Satan to twist the words of Scripture and to undermine the power of the Blood of Jesus.
I’ve just come across someone who seriously believes that the Law was put in place only to protect the seed of God; so that Mary could be pure when she received Jesus through the Holy Spirit. This was supposedly the sole purpose of the Law. And because of this, because the Law was purely to protect the Seed of God and the family line of Jesus it opens up the opportunity to receive Jesus into your life without the need to repent. Why repent for your sins when the only purpose of the Law was to protect the line of Jesus? And if the Law was God’s plan to protect the purity of His seed then why did it fail? We’ve only got to look to King David to see an adulterer and murderer. God does not fail. He would not have put in place a plan to protect the line of Jesus knowing that it would fail. If the family line of Jesus needed to remain pure, then it would have. God would not have born His son into the line of David.
It’s an attractive option in modern day life; to be able to receive salvation without admitting blame. We live in a ‘pass the buck’ society. We don’t look where we are going, trip over a paving stone and we sue the local authority because we do not pay attention to what’s going on around us. Thinking you can receive salvation without acknowledging your sin and the reason for Jesus having to come to Earth is a dangerous state of affairs.
We must constantly have on our minds that Jesus came because we could not live by the Law. We are sinners. Jesus came to be our sacrifice because we broke the Law. The Law did not come to protect Jesus. Jesus came to protect us from the Law. He came to protect us from the consequencies of the Law. The price of sin is death. Jesus came as the Lamb to pay the price of our sin.
I’m going to repeat that; Jesus came to protect us, sinners, from the Law because we are unable to live by the Law. The Law did not come to protect Jesus.
2,000 years on from the saving Grace of the Lord and we can still fail to grasp that we choose to sin. And because we chose to sin God had to sacrifice His only Son to redeem us.
We need to be aware of why these new revelations can take root. It takes root in those who fail to read the Bible. It takes root in those who do not read the Word of God. Picking up a paperback book of someones interpretation of the Bible will not show you the Will of God. It can only show you a small selection of Scriptures and only the Scriptures that the author wants you to read.
Let’s go to Romans 12 verses 1 and 2.
Rom 12:1 So then, my friends, because of God’s great mercy to us I appeal to you: Offer yourselves as a living sacrifice to God, dedicated to his service and pleasing to him. This is the true worship that you should offer.
Rom 12:2 Do not conform yourselves to the standards of this world, but let God transform you inwardly by a complete change of your mind. Then you will be able to know the will of God---what is good and is pleasing to him and is perfect. (Good News Bible)
Paul is telling us to offer ourselves as a living sacrifice to God, to dedicate ourselves to Him and to please Him. You can not dedicate yourself to someone and please them if you do not know what they want you to do. You get to know what they want by getting to know them. The more fully you know them, the more you are able to please them. To know God means to read His Word, meditate on His word and pray on His Word.
Paul goes on in verse 2 to tell us not to conform to the world but to let God transform our minds completely so that we can see what is good and pleasing to Him.
We must stop thinking the way the world thinks. We must acknowledge that we have sinned. That the Law was given by God to us so that we may live a rightous life, but we failed. We need to stop being caught up in the need for hype and the need to be different. The marketing people come in and tell us what the next fashion is going to be for the next season and we need to grasp it, if we want to be part of the modern culture. We all want to be seen as being relevent and up to date.
I want us to take a look at 2 Timothy 4:3 and see if we can see something familiar going on here
2Ti 4:3 The time will come when people will not listen to sound doctrine, but will follow their own desires and will collect for themselves more and more teachers who will tell them what they are itching to hear.
2Ti 4:4 They will turn away from listening to the truth and give their attention to legends.
2Ti 4:5 But you must keep control of yourself in all circumstances; endure suffering, do the work of a preacher of the Good News, and perform your whole duty as a servant of God.
If we look to the world and not the Word, we will start to look for things which meet our desires. You know, sometimes it difficult to tell the difference between a christian book and anyother type of self help book. We even have christian diet books. But we have to remember that we need to meet God’s desires not our own. If we do not study the Word ourselves but rely on others to teach us the Word then we will fall prey to those who seek to draw us away from the Truth.
If we do not know the Word then we will look to those who teach what we think the Word should be. When that happens we start to look for those who will build us up rather than going out to find others that we can lift up. We will start to look inwards at ourselves rather than outwards and helping others particularly those who are weaker then us. What we start to do is change God to meet our expectations rather than changing ourselves to meet God’s expectations.
We live in a dumbed down quick fix society. It’s all about 5 easy steps to this, 10 easy steps to that. If we want to live a fulfilled successful christian life then we need to do a bit of work. We need to get into the Word and study it. We need to start to get an understanding and revelation from it for ourselves. We need to root ourselves deeply into the Word so that when times get difficult we remain firmly planted. Jesus gave us the parable of seeds falling on different types of ground. This is so true of faith today.
Have you planted yourself along the way side, ready of those who operate on the fringes of christianity to take you away into their own doctrine? Or are you planted on stoney ground, with no depth to your root. Are you just seeking the next spiritual experience, getting yourself ready for the next christian fad? You have no depth to your faith so you do not fully understand what it means to be a disciple of Jesus. You do not need to jump on a plane and go searching across the world to receive the next spiritual experience, and there are people who do that. If you are fully rooted in the Word, with revelation of the Word that comes through study, you know that the best spiritual experience is avaialble to you whenever and wherever you are. You know that the moment you accept Jesus into your life and your Lord and Saviour, you also accept the Holy spirit into your life.
The same parabel about the seed also tells us there are seeds that will find good ground and but produce different levels of fruit. Some will be 100 fold, others 60 fold and others 30 fold. For a seed to produce abundant fruit it needs to be fed and watered regularly. And this is true of us as chritians. We need to be fed and watered if we are to become 100 fold producers for God.
God has provided us with what we need to be 100 fold producers. He has given us the feed that we need
Joh 6:33 For the bread of God is He who comes down from Heaven and gives life to the world.
And He has given us the water that we need
Joh 7:38 He who believes on Me, as the Scripture has said, "Out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water."
Joh 7:39 (But He spoke this about the Spirit, which they who believed on Him should receive; for the Holy Spirit was not yet given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.)
We need to keep our focus, not on ourselves but on Jesus, the Word made flesh. We need to let the Spirit guide us in our revelation of the Word. If you have a true understanding of the Word you realsie that you do not need to go chasing after the lastest christian fashion or fad. You fdo not need to go round chasing expereinces. If you have understanding of the Word you know that God is the same yesterday, today and forever.
We need to be constantly on our guard to ensure that what we receive is based on sound doctrine.
Let’s have a look at Matthew 13 verse 4
Mat 13:24 He put out another parable to them, saying, The kingdom of heaven is compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field.
Mat 13:25 But while men slept, his enemy came and sowed darnel among the wheat and went his way.
Mat 13:26 But when the blade had sprung up and had produced fruit, then the darnel also appeared.
Mat 13:27 So the servants of the householder came and said to him, Sir, did you not sow good seed in your field? Then where have the darnel come from?
Mat 13:28 He said to them, An enemy has done this. The servants said to him, Then do you want us to go and gather them up?
Mat 13:29 But he said, No, lest while you gather up the darnel you also root up the wheat with them.
Mat 13:30 Let both grow together until the harvest. And in the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, First gather together the darnel and bind them in bundles to burn them, but gather the wheat into my granary.
Here we have Jesus explaining that while there are those who will teach the gospel correctly in people - that is the man who sows good seed. He also warns that there are those who will give wrong teaching to the people. They will sound plausable to many, especially to those who only have a passing knowledge of the Word of God. He tells us that while men sleep the enemy will come and plant darnel seed amongst the wheat.
Jesus tells us that the enemy comes while men sleep, this can refer to those who have not yet accepted Christ and so do not know the word adqueately to know the difference between good teaching and bad but it can also refer to those christians who have their spiritual eyes closed; that is they do not study the word sufficiently to recoginise bad teaching when it comes along.
Jesus refers to bad teaching as being the darnel seed planted by the enemy amongst the wheat. We need to realise that superficially darnel seed looks very similar to wheat, it’s only when growth starts does the difference become more noticable. And then it’s too late. Jesus says that they will both be grown until the time of harvest and then they will be sorted and seperated.
It’s so important that we test all teaching against Scripture. And we need to test it against all of Scripture, not just against a selected number of verses. You can only test the teaching if you know the Scripture through study and understanding.Sometimes we need to get right back to basics in order to remain on track. I acccept that Paul said we need to get off the baby food and start on substance but we need to ensure that what we do is grow up in the Word and not grow out of it.
I’ve just mentioned one example of attempts to sow darnel amongst the wheat by refering to the new revelation of Jesus and the Law. That’s dangerous enough but what about when a respected and established evangelist attemots to undermine the love that God showed to His children by palcing his Son on the cross as the sacrifice for our sins.
I’ve not read the book myself so I can only go by other peoples reviews and reports, but using the authors own words in a newspaper interview this is what he said...
‘Condemning the commonly-held view of penal substitution, which “presents us with a God who is first and foremost comncerned with retribution”, he continues. “In the Lost Message I claim that penal substitution is tantamount to ‘child abuse’ - a vengeful Father punishing his Son for an offence he has not even committed. Though the sheer bluntness of the imagery (not original to me of course) might shock some, in truth, it is only a stark ‘unmasking’ of the voilent, pre-Christian thinking behind such a theology”.
The very words that the author said, and I’m not going to please him by mentioning his name, gives the clue as to why he’s sowing the darnel seed. He’s saying it to shock, to get the column inches in the paper, to hype up his own work and his own name. But those who know the word, who know God because they know His Word, will immediately see straight through this hype and desire to place themselves above those who were inspired by God to write the Gospels.
Do you seriously think that if this view was held at the time of the birth of the church, the early christians would be willing to be martyred. Would Stephen call out in forgiveness to those who stoned him to death if God was viewed as a child abuser? Do you seriuosly think the Saul would have become Paul and changed from being a persecuter of the Jews to one of the greatest and most loyal followers of Jesus if he thought that God punished and killed His Son out of vengence. No this is pure hype, made to sell a few more books and to make a few more pounds. And more than that it done to detract from the power of the Word of God and the sacrifice of Jesus.
And this is the thing that commonly comes up with bad teaching. The common denominator is the attempt to play down the power of the blood of Jesus Christ. The blood that was spilled to wash us clean of our sins. If we lose sight of the power of the blood then we lose the battle to become rightous in the sight of God.
We can find Jesus but unless we know His reason for being, that of paying the price of our sins, then finding him is all to no avail.
Eph 1:7 In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace,
Lets take a closer look at a passage in Hebrews
Heb 7:26 For such a high priest became us, who is holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners and made higher than the heavens,
Heb 7:27 who does not need, as those high priests, to offer up sacrifice daily, first for his own sins and then for the people’s sins. For He did this once for all, when He offered up Himself.
There is no sign here of a vengeful God. What we see here is Jesus willingly giving Himself up as the sacrifice for his people. We see it in verse 27. He did it once for all when He offered up Himself.
And unlike the high priests of the leveticus sacrifices, or the jewish sacrifices, Jesus did not need to offer up a sacrifice for His own sins because there was no sin in His life. He gave Himself up, pure, for His people.
As we get closer to the time of our Lord’s return we need to acknowledge that the enemy will do everything possible to prevent people coming into salvation. He will do his best to twist and turn the Scriptures so that even those who have found Jesus but are not willing to study the Word can be lead astray. While the Word plants seeds of wheat in your mind and on your hearts that grow into substance and nurishment, these false or wrong teeachings will plant the seeds of darnel that will try and choke and outgrow the wheat. These seeds will take you away from productive lives in God and it will take us away from our true destiny of being with God.
Of course, what is happening now is no different to what was happening when Paul was around. If we go to Galations...
Gal 1:6 I marvel that you so soon are being moved away from Him who called you into the grace of Christ, to another gospel,
Gal 1:7 which is not another, but some are troubling you, and desiring to pervert the gospel of Christ.
Gal 1:8 But even if we or an angel from Heaven preach a gospel to you beside what we preached to you, let him be accursed.
Gal 1:9 As we said before, and now I say again, If anyone preaches a gospel to you beside what you have received, let him be accursed.
Gal 1:10 For now do I persuade men, or God? Or do I seek to please men? For if I yet pleased men, I would not be a servant of Christ.
We have a responsibility to remain firm in the Word. The reality is, if you try and change the gospel to suit the needs of man, or the flesh, then we lose the Grace of God that has set us free from sin and death. When the time comes for judgement we will pay a price for not standing firm. We will be sorted like the wheat from the darnel. And those who have chosen to go astray will not be pleasing to God.
But if we are strong in the Word, and the Word comes from the Bible, then we should not be frightened of false teaching. Paul came across it on a number of occassions. One of the things that he warned of in the letter to the Hebrews was about false doctrines.
Heb 13:7 Remember those leading you, who have spoken to you the Word of God, whose faith follow, considering the end of their conduct:
Heb 13:8 Jesus Christ the same yesterday and today and forever.
Heb 13:9 Do not be carried about with different and strange doctrines, for it is good for the heart to be established with grace, not with foods, in which those who have walked in them were not helped.
Heb 13:10 We have an altar of which they have no right to eat, those who serve the tabernacle.
As we get closer to the day in which Jesus returns we need to heed the prophetic words given of false teaching and false teachers.
Paul warns Timothy in his letter about being aware of false teachers.
1Ti 4:1 But the Spirit expressly says that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits and teachings of demons,
1Ti 4:2 speaking lies in hypocrisy, being seared in their own conscience,
Peter had strong words to say about those who come to destruction in the kingdom of God.
2Pe 2:1 But there were also false prophets among the people, even as there will be false teachers among you, who secretly will bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing on themselves swift destruction.
2Pe 2:2 And many will follow their pernicious ways, and because of them the way of truth will be evil spoken of.
2Pe 2:3 And through covetousness they will use you for gain with well-turned words; for whom judgment from of old does not linger, and their destruction does not sleep.
And he then goes on to warn uss of the dangers of following these strange and unholy doctrines.
2Pe 2:18 For when they speak great swelling words of vanity, they lure through the lusts of the flesh, by unbridled lust, the ones who were escaping from those who live in error;
2Pe 2:19 promising them liberty, they themselves are the slaves of corruption. For by whom anyone has been overcome, even to this one he has been enslaved.
2Pe 2:20 For if they have escaped the pollutions of the world through the full knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, and are again entangled, they have been overcome by these, their last things are worse than the first.
2Pe 2:21 For it would have been better for them not to have fully known the way of righteousness, than fully knowing it, to turn from the holy commandment delivered to them.
2Pe 2:22 But the word of the true proverb has happened to them: The dog turning to his own vomit; and, The washed sow to wallowing in the mire.
These are stong and shocking words from Peter, but we need to realise what is at stake here. Peter is desperately trying to prevent those who have found a place in heaven from falling away and back into hell. These false prophets and teachers come to take us away from our rightful place, they come to drag us back down to fleshly levels by undermining the power of the Gospel.
Today, we need to be just as forceful in our teaching. This is not feel good entertainment. What you are being taught here will alst an eternity. And that eternity will ever be in heaven or hell. Which one it is depends on the road that you choose to take. Jesus said the path was narrow. If we want to remain firmly in the protection of Jesus and the Grace of God then we must remain firmly rooted in the Word and not take de-tours. You may decide to take a de-tour and get lost and not find your way back home again.
If you feel tempted to follow the path or take on the belief of a false doctrine, there’s a question you really need to consider before that move. Is it worth the long term pain for the short term gain?
If you see a new revelation being hawked around back up by hype and shock tactics to amke you take notice, then you need to go straight to the Bible. You need to look at the context of the Scriptures being used to ensure that they really are relevent and you need to look to the message about the new revelation. If it cuts across the message of the Word then it’s false. If it seeks to destroy or deminish the saving grace of God then its false, if it seeks to deny the saving power of the blood of Jesus then it’s false.
We are all guided by the Holy Spirit, if we are a regular reader or the Word then the holy Spirit will guide us in the direction we need to go. The Holy Spirit will protect us. But we must remeber that the Holy Spirit can only guide us and keep us on the right path if we have that path within us.
Paul was a great man. He was guided and led by the Holy Spirit but we must not forget that he was also a great authority on the Jewish Law before his conversion. He had the information within him for the Holy Spirit to use.
We must become moe like Paul. We need to study the Word, get to know God, understand the sacrifices that He has made for us and why He made them and then we can let the Holy Spirit guide us in our decisions.
