WWUTT 692 Having the Appearance of Godliness?

Paul’s Warning About Men Corrupted in Mind

The Apostle Paul warned Timothy about men who oppose the truth, who are corrupted in mind and disqualified regarding the faith. They are leading people astray. But he says their folly will be plain to all.

And I pray it would be, when we understand the text.

This is when we understand the text studying God's word to reach all the riches of full assurance in Christ. Thank you for subscribing and if this has ministered to you, please let others know about our program.

Here once again is Pastor Gabe Hughes.

Thank you Becky. In our study of 2nd Timothy, we are in chapter 3 and this week looking at the paragraph that covers verses 1 -9. The Apostle Paul writes,. But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty.

For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power.

Avoid such people. For among them are those who creep into households and capture weak women, burdened with sins and led astray by various passions, always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth.

Just as Janus and Jambres opposed Moses, so these men also oppose the truth. Men corrupted in mind and disqualified regarding the faith. But they will not get very far, for their folly will be plain to all, as was that of those two men.

Andy Stanley’s Pattern of Theological Liberalism

Last week, Andy Stanley said something controversial about the Bible that would drop him into the category of a theological liberal. This week, he's doing interviews to clarify his statement, telling pastors why they need to listen to him, and throwing academics under the bus for taking him out of context and not picking up the phone and giving him a call.

This has been Stanley's pattern for over a decade. In case you don't know, Andy Stanley is the son of Charles Stanley, who is a famous Southern Baptist minister. He was once president of the Southern Baptist Convention, host of the Bible teaching program In Touch.

His son, Andy Stanley, also from the Atlanta area, that's where Charles Stanley had his church. Stanley founded a church called North Point, which is non-denominational, but strangely still gets welcomed with open arms into Southern Baptist dealings.

But anyway, so North Point Church is a multi-campus church there in the Atlanta area, and I even have extended family that attends one or more of those churches down around that place. So it's always been interesting to me to hear what Stanley is talking about, knowing that it affects my family.

But more than that, with the outreach of Stanley's ministry and North Point, he has fingers in so many different churches in so many different denominations, it's hard to go anywhere and not see a church somewhere with Andy Stanley books on the shelf in their library.

His effect is far-reaching and downright poisonous. It's not that Stanley is gradually falling into theological liberalism. He is a theological liberal. Less than two years ago, and this is an issue that we've talked about even here on this podcast if you've been a longtime listener, Stanley taught that in order to reach today's millennials with the Bible, we shouldn't use much Bible.

And his argument was so bad that he had to write 7 ,500 words to clarify it, which was then published in Outreach Magazine. In case you don't know how long 7 ,500 words is, it's almost two complete sermons.

And in that article, he felt like he needed to remind everyone whose son he was in order to distill the accusation that he had eschewed the inerrancy, sufficiency and authority of the scriptures. Well, the latest chapter in Andy Stanley's continued theological liberalism came about a couple of weeks ago.

As a matter of fact, it was a sermon that he delivered at the end of April, in which he said that Christians need to unhitch the Old Testament from their faith. Owen Strahan at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary retorted, there's only one unhitching that you should contemplate.

The unhitching of Stanley's unbiblical teaching from your ministry. There's been much ink spilled by more learned and scholarly men than I am, or more importantly, more biblically faithful men than Andy Stanley addressing this comment that he made at the end of this sermon.

And if you want to read more about it, I would recommend David Prince's article. Once again, he has put together a terrific response to Andy Stanley, which usually when Stanley says something controversial or that falls into the category of theological liberalism, David Prince usually has a pretty good response to that.

I'm not going to go into that comment so much, or at least not directly, but I am drawing from the same sermon because there were other things that Stanley said in that sermon that were just as bad as you need to unhitch your faith from the Old Testament.

When I was making comments about it on Twitter, somebody contacted me and said, you're taking Stanley out of context. Did you listen to the entire sermon? I replied, yes, I did. And it was way worse than just the thing that people are saying right now about Stanley claiming that you need to unhitch your faith from the Old Testament.

He even goes as far as denying the Ten Commandments. So as we read this warning here from the Apostle Paul to Timothy about godlessness in the last days and mentioning that there are going to be those who have an appearance of godliness but deny its power, there are going to be those who are opposed to the truth, men corrupted in mind and disqualified regarding the faith, but their folly will be plain to all.

And I believe that that is the case with Andy Stanley. In the sermon in question, he was teaching from Acts chapter 15, the Jerusalem Council that we read about there. When some men came from Judea and were teaching the brothers, unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved.

So the apostles and the elders gathered together in Jerusalem, and this also included Peter and James, the half-brother of Jesus. And after much debate, Peter stood up and said to them, Brothers, you know that in the early days, God made a choice among you that by my mouth, the Gentiles should hear the word of the gospel and believe.

And God, who knows the heart, bore witness to them by giving them the Holy Spirit just as he did to us. And he made no distinction between us and them, having cleansed their hearts by faith. Now therefore, why are you putting God to the test by placing a yoke on the neck of the disciples that neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear?

But we believe that we will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they will. Peter making his appeal that we are saved by grace, not of works. In verse 12, all the assembly fell silent and they listened to Barnabas and Paul as they related what signs and wonders God had done through them among the Gentiles.

After they finished speaking, James replied, Brothers, listen to me. Simeon has related how God first visited the Gentiles to take from them a people for his name. And with this, the words of the prophets agree, just as it is written.

After this, I will return and I will rebuild the tent of David that has fallen. I will rebuild its ruins and I will restore it. That the remnant of mankind may seek the Lord and all the Gentiles who are called by my name says the Lord who makes these things known from of old.

So interesting to note here that even in this passage that Stanley is teaching from Acts chapter 15, James quotes the Old Testament. He goes on to say, verse 19, therefore, my judgment is that we should not trouble those of the Gentiles who turned to God, but we should write to them to abstain from the things polluted by idols and from sexual immorality and from what has been strangled and from blood.

Acts 15 and the True Meaning of James’s Letter

I'm going to let Andy Stanley pick up here and I'll be interrupting the sermon periodically with commentary.

James says we need to write them a letter and help, you know, work through and sort out and tell them what we decided so that you don't just go up there and say what we did. We're going to put it in writing and then put our names on it and send some trustworthy people with you back to Antioch so those Christians up there will know what to do and how Jewish they have to be and what they have to do with Moses.

And here's what James says. This is extraordinary. Instead, we should write them. Instead of telling them they have to be circumcised and keep the whole law of Moses, they have to be Jewish to be Christian.

Instead we should write to them telling them that Christians in Antioch, here's what they got to do. Abstain from food polluted by idols, from sexual immorality and from the meat of strangled animals and from blood.

What? What? Yeah. This is what we're going to tell them. This will help them. This is going to sort it. This is going to solve the problem. Tell them to abstain from food polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from the meat of strangled animals and from blood.

Now it looks like when you first read this that he's kind of cherry picking from the law of Moses. Like, okay, they don't have to do all 600, but let's just give them a few. Let's see, you know, you can't eat meat, you know, from strangled animals and sexual immorality.

Looks like he's cherry picking. This is so important. Look up here. He's not. Because here's his explanation for this strange group of Old Testament-ish kind of commands. Four, that means I'm going to explain why this letter.

For the law of Moses has been preached in every city from the earliest times and is read in the synagogues on every Sabbath. In other words, in Antioch, there are a bunch of synagogues and there are so many Jewish people living up there.

And there are so many Jewish people who are bought into and kind of hardwired to the dietary laws of Moses. So here's the question. Why would James suggest they send that particular message to Gentile Christians?

What does the law of Moses has been taught in synagogues every Sabbath? What does that have to do with these Old Testament-ish commands? And why these? Why doesn't he say, okay, tell the Gentiles, um, let's see, okay.

Do not steal. Thou shalt not steal. That's a good one. What else you got? Oh yeah, that's a good one. Thou shalt not murder. That's a good one. What else we got? Okay. Thou shalt not commit adultery. Let's just go with three.

Send them these. Why the food thing? And then this very general statement and no sexual immorality. What's the connection? This is so important. Those imperatives had nothing to do with keeping the law of Moses.

Those imperatives had everything to do with keeping the peace in the church. He was asking these new Gentile believers to make some dietary concessions for the sake of unity in the church because he knew no matter what they taught for a Jewish person, that dietary law was like, okay, I know we're free and I know Peter had a vision and I know what Jesus said, but I just can't eat pork.

I'm shrimp. I'm just, I just can't. I mean, I love Jesus. Yes, I do. I love Jesus. How about you? But I just, I can't, just don't make me do that. And so they're saying, look, tell the Gentiles, tell the Gentiles, you make concessions like we're making concessions because we're going to have one church, not two.

This was all about peacekeeping, not law keeping.

The Old Testament, Idolatry, and Holiness in Acts 15

Stanley is using this council in Acts chapter 15 to completely write off Old Testament. And that is wrong. That is absolutely not the application of Acts 15. It is a misappropriation of what we're reading about here.

Now, there is certainly a context in what James is addressing the Gentiles with when he tells them to abstain from the things polluted by idols and from sexual immorality and from what has been strangled and from blood.

There's certainly a context there. And all four of those things are dealing with not dietary laws, as Stanley is saying. They have to do with idolatry. It says that right at the very start of these instructions, right to them to abstain from the things polluted by idols.

Now that can include food, the food that had been offered to an idol and then was being sold in the meat market. But that doesn't mean it pertains to dietary laws because it doesn't have to do with the Jewish law on diet.

It has to do with food that had previously been offered to idols. And a Jew considered that to be repulsive. It was a repulsive thing to have anything to do with an idol. But most especially, it was forbidden by God.

And where do we read that, ladies and gentlemen, in the Ten Commandments? The first commandment, I am the Lord, your God, you will have no other gods before me. Second commandment, do not raise up any graven images and worship them.

So that's right at the very beginning of the law. And here, James is telling the Gentiles have nothing to do with something that would provoke the Lord to jealousy. I'm drawing those words out of First Corinthians 10, as Paul gives similar instructions to the Corinthians.

So abstain from the things polluted by idols and from sexual immorality. See, that could have nothing to do with dietary laws. Sexual immorality was practiced in just about every pagan temple, especially if you had a fertility god or goddess.

Part of the ritual was you went into the temple and had sex with a priestess prostitute on an altar before an idol of that false god. This was regular cultural life for a Gentile. And so James is saying, have nothing to do with sexual immorality, do not partake in those things that had to do with your former way of life and also abstain from what has been strangled and from blood.

See, pagans believed that if you drank the blood of an animal, especially shortly after it had died, you would absorb the life force of that animal. This doesn't have to do with with with dietary laws.

It has to do with idolatry. And the reason for this was not necessarily for unity. Yes, you need to consider the conscience of your Jewish brothers and sisters. Absolutely. That is an aspect of this. But this was more about holiness, not about unity or keeping the peace.

It was being holy before God. Don't even flirt with any of those idolatrous ways and practices that you were in in your former pagan Gentile way of life. Instead, together as Jews and Gentiles, we pursue Christ.

We believe that we will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, as Peter said in Acts chapter 15, 11. And it is Christ who brings unity, not our agreement or concessions on certain laws and dietary practices and so on and so forth.

Defining Sexual Immorality and Rejecting Vague Moralism

Now, again, Stanley was trying to explain this as a dietary issue. So how does he explain sexual immorality there? He gets even worse as we go on.

Now, I want to talk about this one real quick. This is because this is kind of the outliers, like the dietary thing, kind of odd. And then he says, oh, yeah, and abstain from sexual immorality. Now, if I were to hand everybody a three by five card and I were to say, tell me what you think this means or what this means to you, how many different answers would I get?

About as many answers as there are cards, right?

My brothers and sisters in Christ, there is one definition of sexual immorality, and that is any kind of sex outside of the bond of marriage between a man and his wife for whom God intended sex to be enjoyed.

It is meant only for marriage. Any kind of sex outside of marriage is sexual immorality. There aren't dozens and dozens of definitions that Stanley would get from the members of his congregation. There is only one.

And he won't give that definition to his congregation. Rather, he plays it off as being some sort of pagan thing back in the first century.

So what does this even mean? You're going to send a bunch of idle ex-pagans who participated in temple prostitution, who have a very different sense of morality and what you can and can't do with slaves.

I mean, the morality of the pagan world, you should know this, in the pagan religions, the gods could care less how you treated other people. The gods, there was no religious morality, zero, zip up. The gods just wanted sacrifices.

Now there was civil law in terms of what you could and couldn't do, but in terms of religious law, there was no moral religious law in paganism. It was a completely separate thing. So to send a bunch of Gentiles this, and abstain from sexual immorality, what does that even mean?

This was a, this is so important, this was a general call to avoid immoral behavior, but not immoral behavior as defined by the Old Testament or the Law and the Prophets. Why? Because they didn't have one.

They weren't Jewish. But as defined by the Apostle Paul, who had been teaching in Antioch for two or more years. And do you know what the Apostle Paul consistently tied sexual behavior to? Not the Old Covenant, not the Ten Commandments.

The one commandment that Jesus gave us, that you are to treat others as God through Christ has treated you. So when Paul talked about relationships, he said stuff like this, in your relationships to one another, in your relationships with one another, have the same attitude as Christ Jesus.

Any questions? Hmm, kind of covers it, doesn't it? Means I gotta put people before me, yeah. In your relationships with one another, just remember, your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit and so is hers and so is his.

Any questions? No, I think that about covers it.

The Biblical Definition of Sexual Morality and Stanley’s Vague Theology

Boy, that is a textbook example right there of liberal theology, of being as vague as you possibly can. You almost think that Stanley has actually taught you something biblical. Nope, actually he's counter-biblical there.

He will not give you the definition of sexual immorality. He just gives you some vague thing like, well, your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit and so is hers and so you must treat one another with respect.

That's what sexual morality is. He hasn't said anything about what sexual morality is. He has given you subjective truth. It's whatever you think it is. Just be respectful to yourself and to the person that you make love with, which doesn't have to be in the confines of marriage.

Stanley never mentioned that. It doesn't even have to be between a man and a woman. He used the pronouns his and hers, but Stanley does not believe that marriage should be exclusively between a man and a woman.

North Point Church has homosexuals hosting life groups in their church and I know this because Stanley has said so. It was in a sermon that he delivered a few years back entitled, When Gracie Met Truthy and Dr. Al Mohler even confronted the things that Stanley said in that particular sermon.

So he will not define marriage. He will not define true sexual morality and what God says is sexually immoral. He is among those that the Apostle Paul talks about here in Second Timothy, chapter three, who are led astray by various passions, who oppose the truth, who are corrupted in mind and disqualified regarding the faith.

And I truly hope this man repents and seeks God and knows Christ and obeys him for he has been led astray by the schemes of Satan and he is likewise leading many others astray. As the Apostle Paul said, Second Timothy, chapter three, verse five, avoid such people.

A Prayer for Those Led Astray and a Call to Gentleness

Let's pray. Our Lord God, I pray that people that are under that teaching at North Point Church would realize the lies that are being spouted from that platform and they would get out of there. And I pray that Stanley's reach would be limited, that the so many people in the U .S. and around the world that are being led astray by Stanley's teaching, likewise, you would give them eyes to see and ears to hear and they would flee from it and warn others about it and not be led into such destructive heresies.

Lord, please give us patience with one another that we might lead others to a knowledge of the truth and do this with gentleness and respect. For you were so loving toward us when you considered our need and sent your son Jesus to die on the cross for our sins.

And by the gift of your Holy Spirit, our eyes have been opened to the truth that we may know it and grow in the knowledge of it and share it with others. Lead us in Jesus' name. Amen.