House Rule #10 Beware Apostasy (1 Timothy 4:1-5) | Adult Sunday School

6 The sorrows of those who run after another god shall molt their drink -offerings of blood.

7 I will not pour out or take their names on my lips.

8 The Lord is my chosen portion and my cup. 9 Lines have fallen for me in pleasant places.

10 Indeed, I have beautiful inheritance. 11

I bless the Lord, who gives me counsel.

12 In the night also my heart instructs me.

13 I have set the Lord always before me, because he is in my right hand.

14 I shall not be shaken, therefore my heart is glad, and my whole being rejoices.

New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989, 1995 the

Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved. 1 Though the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble at its welling, whose dreams make glad the city of God, habitation of the

Most High. God is in the midst of her, she shall not be moved,

God will help her when morning dawns.

The nations reign, the kingdoms totter, he utters his voice.

The earth is without trebles, the works of the

Lord, how he has brought desolation. On the earth, he breaks the bow and shatters the spear, he burns the chariots.

Be exalted among the nations,

I will be exalted in the earth.

Be exalted among the nations, be exalted in the earth.

The most is without is our fortress, the most is without is our fortress.

That's so every time they leave our house, it's like, would you mind giving it to me? Hi Lauren.

He's got his bag. Cute. Good morning everyone.

Good to see each one this morning. Welcome to Kootenai Community Church Adult Sunday School.

We're going to open our Bibles back this morning to 1 Timothy, and we're going to go through the first five verses of chapter four this morning.

We just introduced it last time, and there are some notes.

If you were here last time, you've got a set of notes. But if you need a set of notes, if you were not here, there are some being passed around, and there were a few back there on the countertop back there at the back of the church.

So we'll be finishing off page 16, house rule number 10, beware of apostasy.

Not a very cheerful subject, but a very, very important one as we're going to see as we look last time.

So let's commit our time to our Lord and ask his blessing on our study this morning. Our Father, we do thank you for this opportunity to be together, to gather in the name of our

Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. And now to be able to open your word and study your word, we know we are dependent upon you to be our teacher by your spirit.

And so we just ask your guidance this morning. Show us what you would have us learn. Help us to apply it to our lives.

And we will praise you in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, last time we just began and went through a very brief study of this issue of apostasy because Paul is very concerned about it as he writes to Timothy.

And Timothy is going to have to deal with this issue in the churches that he's ministering to in the city of Ephesus.

And we saw in chapter 4, verse 1, that Paul opens up by simply saying,

Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith.

And we spend a little bit of time talking about the basic definition in the Bible of apostasy and how important it is to sort of develop a biblical definition because we are living in a time, obviously, that is just—we're swimming in a sea of apostasy, basically.

And it's important for us to be able to have a working definition of what it is so that we are not swinging between extremes.

One extreme, of course, would be just not acknowledging it, not knowing that it's there, not knowing what it looks like.

And the other extreme would be to be chasing it around all over the place when maybe it's not really there.

So we saw from 2 Peter 2 and also from Jude that both of those writers deal with this issue of apostasy.

And we saw that if we take the biblical data and walk through some of the examples of apostasy in Scripture, we can form a bit of a template so we can see that these all have something in common.

We saw that they all work through a basic set of criteria. They start out with some revelation from God.

And we looked at Paul's letter to the Romans, the first chapter, verse 18 and following.

They started out knowing God, even though they knew God, it says.

And Peter, of course, and Paul both are in full agreement with this. He talks about how they had the knowledge of our

Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. There's some revelation that they receive. And we also saw

Paul's argument is in Romans chapter 1 that every single human being has revelation because of creation.

And here, once again, he goes right back to creation, the basic fundamental truth of Scripture where it all starts.

And that Judas was really the prototypical example of a

New Testament apostate. He's a classic example. You could take him and walk right through every single one of these issues.

He had revelation. He had some knowledge of God. In fact, he had a tremendous amount of knowledge of God.

He had the presence of Christ right there with him for three years. And then it moves to rescue.

There's some movement toward the things of God. Maybe people join up.

They sign up. They might join a church or indicate that there is some acceptance of the truth of God.

Judas certainly did. He changed his life enough to walk with the disciples of Jesus Christ for three years, did he not?

And then there is some rejection. This is the part that we can't really see. It's not visible.

You don't know when exactly this takes place within a person. But there is a decision to turn from the truth.

And when that happens, what you can see is their return to their sin. That's the visible part.

And of course, Peter is being very graphic using that illustration of a dog returning to its vomit.

I mean, that's pretty graphic, especially if you have a weak stomach like me. Jude also talks about this.

People who turn away from the truth and they return back to their sensuality, as he says.

They go back to where they were. Peter says they are again entangled in that.

Judas certainly did that. The disciples that night didn't recognize it, right? They were all sort of unaware of what was going on.

We have insight because we have Scripture that tells us what was happening. But he returned to his sin.

And then we saw the last step is the rejection by God. Every time this is mentioned, every time these people are talked about in Scripture, whether it's the

Israelites as Jude walks you through. He uses the example of the

Israelites, the people of Sodom and Gomorrah, and then, very interestingly, angels. Angels apostatizing, okay?

We're going to be talking about that a little bit later on. But Judas is the classic example.

And of course, in John's gospel, John so graphically presents what happened there, it's so sad and tragic, in the upper room.

The issue of Judas getting ready to betray the

Lord. And John is very, very fond of using words that are contrastive.

He sounds like simple terms. That which is born of the flesh is flesh. That which is born of the spirit is spirit.

And so when you take these and look at them and define them, you realize these are very complex things. He also uses the metaphor of darkness and light, okay?

So you could walk Judas right through this very same progression using the issue of light.

He had light. He had the revelation of Jesus Christ. John talks a lot about light in the first chapter and on through his gospel account.

He followed the light, did he not? He was one of the disciples. And then there's some decision took place within him.

We don't know exactly when. We have some indications in a few places in Scripture. One of them was when he made an issue out of Mary anointing the

Lord with the expensive perfume. You remember that? And Judas objected to that.

He said, well, we should sell that and give the money to the poor. I think he might have been one of the first social warriors, you know, social justice warriors.

He was displaying his supposed concern and care for poor people.

But really, he was a thief and he just wanted more money to be able to pilfer out of the money bag, as we know.

But then he turned against the Lord. He betrayed him. That was a visible part.

He got up and left that night. And it is so sad and graphic, that statement that is made in the

Gospels, about how he was there with the Lord. They were in the upper room.

They were all together and nobody knew that he was going to betray him. They didn't recognize it. This is another characteristic of apostates, right?

You don't know. They're sheep in wolf's clothing. And when the

Lord gave him the morsel or the bread as the host, he would have given the first bite to the guest of honor.

How Judas ever wound up on the left side of him as the guest of honor, it's hard to tell.

I'm not sure how he got there, other than he put himself there. And you remember when he announced that one of you will betray me, they didn't look at Judas and say, well, yeah, it's going to be him.

They didn't know. And Peter tells John, John was probably sitting on his right, ask him who it was.

And John then was able to lean over and say, Lord, who is it? And he says, be the one that I give the bread to.

And he dipped the bread and he fed it. He would have put it in his mouth to Judas.

That is a horrific thing. And then scripture says that Satan entered into him.

And then Jesus said, what you do, do quickly. He dismissed him out of there. And when he left, the disciples didn't recognize it.

No one at the table, John says in John 13, no one at the table knew why he said this to him.

Some thought that because Judas had the money bag, Jesus was telling him, buy what we need for the feast or that he should have something, give something to the poor.

Because, you know, Judas was so concerned about poor people. So he had that reputation even up to that late point in time.

So after receiving the morsel of bread, he immediately went out. And then John says, and it was night there again, using that metaphor of the light and the darkness.

And as John later on writes in his letters at the end of the first century, talking about people who went out from us because they were not of us,

I can't help but think that he certainly had Judas in mind there. And that night must have just been just burned into his thinking and his memory.

But all apostates follow this pattern. They have some light and they make some movement toward the light, toward the word of God, toward the truth, toward Christ, maybe even professing faith in Jesus Christ.

And then they depart from it. That's the whole point where he says, some will depart from the faith.

And so the faith there, and that's page six in your notes, that list of the references to the faith, and how the faith is what

Paul is really concerned about here. It's not the subjective faith that we have in Christ. It's the objective revelation, the word of God, that which we can see, we can read it, we can teach it, we can also depart from it, okay?

So I wanted to just review that very quickly and to see if you have any questions or thoughts about this basic definition of apostasy before we move on.

Julie? Right.

Yeah, that is such a good question. And even I think, I'm not sure who asked the question last week, do they know they're apostates?

I can't remember who asked that. That's an, was that you? Oh, but that's an excellent question because it gets down to what makes the difference in them.

Jude says they are devoid of the spirit. So they're not saved.

The spirit is not there. And how do we know that they are apostates?

We have the witness of the spirit through the word of God. So I believe they know they're rejecting something, but I don't believe they fully spiritually understand what they're rejecting, okay?

Now, they would say, yes, I'm done with Christianity. I reject Christianity. I was looking and reading, and I have an article here even today about someone, pretty famous person, well -known.

I am done with Christianity. They come out and say it. I am not a Christian anymore.

They declare that. Now, those are pretty easy to spot, right? I mean, you don't have to guess. But then the question comes up.

Do they know what they're rejecting? So I'm of the opinion they know they're rejecting something.

They're rejecting Jesus Christ, but they're spiritually blind. And so then

I have a hard trouble believing that they actually understand the full spiritual ramifications of what they're doing, but they still receive the consequences and judgment because they are rejecting

God and his light and his revelation. But that is a real important question.

Peter. And there's probably a pretty high level of hostility toward that person.

Like there was Judas with the Lord. But yeah, so it's a very interesting question.

It's also difficult. But I personally don't believe, and I think that's what you're saying if I get you right. They're spiritually blind.

They think they've grabbed hold of something. And this is why it's so dangerous if you alter the gospel to appeal to the flesh.

You promise them something that the Bible doesn't promise them. And at some point in time, they're going to be disappointed.

And so the danger starts way back upstream in proclaiming a gospel that's not really truly the gospel of the

Bible. The gospel of the Bible offers absolutely nothing that is attractive to an unregenerate person.

You say, well, wait a minute. When I heard it, it sounded like good news. Okay, but why? Why? Something is different about the person who hears the gospel and that is the work of the

Spirit of God in their lives. So we have to be careful to share the gospel as the

Bible presents it and not offer them something that the Bible doesn't. They'll grab ahold of it.

Remember 1 Corinthians, Paul said, the Jews want signs. He could have done that. But the

Gentiles, the Greeks, they like wisdom. He could have done that. He could have built a massive church of Jewish people or Gentiles.

But he preached the gospel because the elect will hear the gospel and come out of both of those groups.

Was there any other questions or thoughts? This issue of apostasy, Nathanael?

He had up to that point. It's a little bit difficult with the way the gospel accounts are because sometimes, like in Luke's account, they're not in chronological order.

We tend to want to see things in chronological order and present things that way. Oftentimes in Scripture, they're more in a logical order, a sequential order.

So it's kind of hard to fit in everything. But prior to that, he had approached the

Pharisees and said, what would you give me to betray him? Sure.

Oh, he did, yeah. I don't think you need to go back and find a point.

Judas was never saved, ever. So that you can't go back and say, well, here's a point where he became lost.

He always was. Now, he always was not an apostate. He became an apostate when he rejected the light that he had and abandoned it.

And just like here in this first verse, depart from the faith. Anybody else?

Yeah, Rick. Well, he called him, yeah, and called him to follow him.

And I don't think you can see in Scripture at any point in time that a decision was made by Judas.

I think he never was saved at any point in time. And so it was not like there was a fulfillment of prophecy in the sovereignty of God.

But at the same time, he reached out to him all the way up to the end, washed his feet.

You know, he gave him that morsel, you know, and called him friend.

He loved his disciples. He experienced every bit of that and then abandoned it.

So tragic story, sad. And that's why this is grim stuff.

But we have to be prepared and be aware of it to be able to recognize it and deal with it in our own environment here.

But also to be able to understand how to minister to these people.

There's an example of how to minister to an apostate. Okay, yeah, Peter. It's important to understand that in his repentance...

I think we reach out to them as much as we can for as long as we can. And God is the one who's going to decide.

I mean, we also have to bear in mind Hebrews chapter 6. That's a chronology of apostasy right there.

They're enlightened. They tasted. Maybe Jim could comment on this. But then it says, it is impossible to renew them again unto repentance.

So we don't know when that line is crossed by that person. We can't tell. But we know there is a line from Scripture.

We know that a person has to... They get to a point. That's why it's so dangerous to be around the gospel or the word of God and hear it preached and taught.

And especially in an environment where you hear the gospel regularly. You hear the word of God taught regularly.

We also need to then encourage people. If you haven't trusted Christ, don't wait. Because the continuous rejection of the gospel creates a hardening of your heart.

And as we're going to see this morning, a possible callusing or searing of the conscience.

And when that happens, that person is lost, I believe, forever.

It's impossible to renew them into repentance. Doesn't mean we don't continue to try. We don't know exactly when that line is crossed.

So Jude, if you read through Jude, that was part of your homework assignment. Oh, I should have had a sign -up list or something so I could...

Well, we won't do that. Jude, a little 25 -verse letter, and he gets down to the bottom, he says, okay, now here's how you deal with this kind of person.

Here's how you deal with this kind of person, this kind of person. And there's variations on it as to how...

But all of it has to do with mercy. We continue to offer the mercy of God, the forgiveness of God, plead with them, trust

Christ. Even, you know, back to Hebrews, as Jim has shown us through there, part of the fellowship in the church is to encourage people if they're wavering or if they're doubting to encourage them back into the

Word of God, back into fellowship so that you can trust in Christ and be built up in your faith.

The warning passages in Hebrews are there for a very good reason. And he's writing to Christians.

He's writing to a believing group of people. And yet, they're there because God uses means to move his people and draw his people to himself.

Okay, was there any other questions or thoughts? Cornell. Yeah, and again, we don't know.

There's a lot we can't see, but we take what we do see and we do know from Scripture and we work to apply it.

And that's why it's fully legitimate in a church setting that, you know, is a relatively sound church to continue to share the gospel, preach the gospel, encourage anyone, and let

God determine by his Spirit who is or isn't and how he applies it. Our task is to teach and preach the

Word of God, right? We let God apply it to people's hearts and minds and lives. Steve. And we are.

It is all around us. What manner of persons ought we to be in our life or our conduct?

Yeah, yeah. I really appreciate the time that you're handling this and that can't happen here.

Sure. Oh yeah, we have to assume that it can. And if nothing else, most of us probably know someone who this would apply to.

And again, the ones that announce, well,

I'm abandoning, I'm leaving Christianity. That's pretty easy, right? But you can also walk back and track this right through that person's life.

You had the light. And many of these people are elevated up in the big, broad evangelical system. They're elevated up very quickly.

And everybody's looking at them. And then all of a sudden, boom. And like Paul says, and others say elsewhere, you know, that the gospel is then blasphemed.

Because, well, see? Just like 2 Peter 3, you know, the scoffers.

Well, you stupid Christians. What do you believe in something like that for? It didn't help him. Hasn't helped me. Well, what did you want?

What kind of help did you want? Did you want your soul to be saved from eternal judgment because of your sins?

Or did you want something else? This is why this issue of sensuality. If you appeal to the senses, you're going to get a big crowd of people, right?

Okay, it is critical. And it's really important. And, you know, we have to be prepared to deal with it.

Okay, anything else? Okay, well, let's work our way through this little chapter here.

This is such an important thing to talk about and deal with. I'm glad we're able to do that.

Good discussion. And I'm also aware that, you know, we can never handle all the issues in a class like this.

It is important to maybe sometime we should do like a brown bag after church and just, you know, have a great big discussion time here.

It'd be fun to do. We should do that. Be happy to do that sometime. So, well, back to what

Paul is talking to Timothy about here and in this letter. And what he says, and I'm just going to read through these five verses.

But this is house rule number 10. Beware of apostasy. Now, the Spirit expressly says that in later times, some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons through the insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared, who forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth.

For everything created by God is good and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer.

Now, this is one of those passages in Scripture that when you read it, it's so stark and so sharp edged, you know.

Paul's not one to sort of want to file off any sharp edges here, kind of like John in 1 John, you know, it's black and white, either or kind of deal.

And I personally like that. I like the clarity of it. But it's also very grim.

What he's doing, he's just drilling down and showing us the underlying forces in these types of things.

And so it almost does not require a whole lot of exposition, although we're going to do that.

You just read through a passage like that and it's pretty self -explanatory. But we're going to work through it.

We're going to see, first of all, the certainty of apostasy. This is, remember when this was written, 22 centuries ago, and he's saying it's going to happen.

He says, now, or but, I think maybe but would be a better translation of that simply because it implies a sharper contrast to what he has just said back up in 14 through 16.

The confession that we have is that Christ Jesus manifested in the flesh, vindicated by the

Spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed in the world, taken up in glory.

This would have been a creed that these people memorized, possibly put to music and sung in their fellowships.

But the Spirit expressly says that in later times, some will depart from the faith.

They depart from the faith. Paul, as we've seen so far, he's real big on the faith, the

Word of God, and that the faith is protected in the churches.

And so this is a warning that there's certainly going to come apostasy.

When he says the Spirit expressly says, some of your translations may say explicitly, this is a single occurrence of this word in the

New Testament, which tells you something. It tells you it's really important right here in this context.

And it's the Spirit saying this. We know that all Scripture is God breathed and profitable, but when the

Apostle Paul says the Spirit expressly or explicitly says, that should get our attention even more because of the topic here.

And it really explicitly, and it actually means to express in words. Well, we know the Spirit inspires

Paul to write what he's writing, and yet it's like this is some other level of inspiration, even though there really is no other level.

But it's just really critically important. And he says, in later times, some will depart from the faith.

We know that later times, we're in later times. Writer of Hebrews said, long ago at many times and in many ways,

God spoke to our fathers by the prophets. But in these last days, he has spoken to us by his

Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom also he created the world.

By the way, creation there, fundamental to the writer of Hebrews theology there.

They're in the last days at the coming of Christ. And most scholars believe that it is talking about the church age between the first coming of Christ and the second coming of Christ.

So the latter times, we are in the latter times right now. And he says, some will depart from the faith.

And so their departure is from the truth, the Word of God. And it means, as we saw last time, to abandon, to leave, forsake, and the faith.

And again, not the subjective faith to believe. That's part of it, obviously. They never had that.

They never did that. They never exercised faith in the truth, in the person of Jesus Christ.

But what they abandon is the truth, the objective content of the

Word of God. And it's going to happen. It's not maybe, it could be.

It's certainly going to happen. And of course, it has been happening all through the history of God's redemptive program, as we have seen.

They will depart from the faith. And then we see the source of it. Where does this come from? How is that part of this?

And that's the rest of verse one. By devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons.

Now you know where it comes from. They devote themselves. The way this word is presented here, it means they're actively, on purpose, devoting themselves.

It has to do with what occupies their mind, what occupies their time and their thinking.

To be willfully committed to something. You remember one of the requirements of a deacon, back up in the context, was that he not be devoted to wine.

Well, clearly there, that's talking about a person who is addicted to wine. It's the very same word. It's what occupies their thinking.

It occupies their time and all of their efforts. And what are they devoted to?

Deceitful spirits, clearly. Demons who are deceptive, deceitful.

They seduce people. These are fallen angels. They are angels who have apostatized.

This is what's so fascinating. Jude uses the angels as an example of apostasy in his little letter. They were, they had light.

Did they not? They had the presence of God. And they had eternally, since their existence, understood who

God was. But what happened? Satan fell and they followed him. So they became demons. And the people who are devoting themselves to them do that because, as Jude says in Jude 19, they are devoid of the spirit.

They are devoid of the spirit. They have no defense in any way, shape, or form against this. Peter? You have examples?

Yeah. Any false teaching, any cult, right?

If you just want to go with the kind of big graphic examples. Any cult is a cult by definition.

They have abandoned the faith. So you can look at two parts of this, as we saw. And Paul's going to deal with it later on too.

There's two things that are very important here. He tells Timothy later on, pay attention to your life and doctrine. So you can look at the doctrine and clearly say this is cultic and it's demonically energized.

Any false teaching is demonically energized like that. You could also look at their life, you know.

How is their life in compliance with the word of God? And so, I mean, the examples are everywhere.

The history of liberalism started out, you know, basically they deny all major doctrines of scripture.

And that has different forms through history. Even right now, the whole issue of churches that want to change the methodology of scripture.

God has called us to preach and teach the word of God. There's evangelical movements and has been for about 45 years now that say, no, we shouldn't do that.

We should do these other things. Well, that doesn't come from scripture. Then where does it come from?

It comes from the doctrines of demons that want to change and alter what the church does.

And if you alter what the church does, if you alter the methodology, your altering of the truth will shortly follow after.

It always has. Spurgeon dealt with this in the downgrade controversy at the end of the 19th century. So does that answer the question?

That would qualify. Yeah, that would definitely qualify. Okay. But the source, they devote themselves to deceitful spirits and, and here's the key, it's not just that they focus in on demons.

It's the teachings or the doctrines of the demons. And so there we are that the teachings get changed.

They get altered. Paul talks about people who don't teach healthy doctrine.

And this is all through the pastoral letters. Or they teach some other doctrine. He dealt with that right at the very beginning.

These people who teach heterodoxy, he uses this word, others, different teaching than apostolic doctrine.

And people say nowadays, in fact, it's almost a creed. Well, I'm not interested in doctrine. I want what's practical, right?

I mean, I can't think of anything that's less practical for your spiritual life than something that's devoid of scripture or doctrine or teaching.

But these people are devoted to these spiritual deception.

Underlying and energizing all false teachers and false religious systems are demonic forces.

Fallen angels who followed Satan and his rebellion left their divinely appointed place in God's created order.

There again, it's a violation of creation. And now do the bidding of their master

Satan and seduce and influence people to do the same thing. Okay. They devote themselves to deceitful spirits and the doctrines of demons.

Paul uses the word doctrines 15 times in the pastoral letters. And often it's encouragement to teach sound doctrine, that type of thing.

Well, here it's a warning against the false teachers who are demonically energized.

And this is part of the great deception. The very guy who's standing in a pulpit, ranting and raving and trying to teach people how to do spiritual warfare by chasing around a county, driving stakes in the ground, and, you know, staking out geographic areas because there's geographic demons and demons of this and demons of that.

That's a deception. That's a distraction. That's a sleight of hand. If they really want to find out where the demonic activity is, it's right there.

Okay. That's demonically generated false teaching to distract people from the reality of the demonic deception that's standing right in front of them.

When I was studying this, I thought, I wonder if Kenneth Copeland ever reads this verse. Devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and the teachings of demons through the insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared.

And he'd have to say if he was being truthful, you know, like me. Because there's an example right there.

I mean, clearly, demonic forces are involved, but many of those same people are teaching about demons and how to deal with them, supposedly, in so -called spiritual warfare.

But the real spiritual warfare, we're back to Ephesians chapter 6, right? The weapons of our warfare.

What is it? What's our battle? It's against these fortresses, but it's ideas and concepts and thoughts.

It's words and teachings that we battle against.

And the source is spirits and demons and that type of thing. False, deceitful spirits.

And then that brings us to Roman numeral 3. The slavery of apostasy.

These people are slaves. They are insincere, so they lie because they have seared consciences, okay?

And that's that verse. This is verse 2. Through the insincerity of liars.

So in other words, the underlying forces are demonic and yet they use people, right?

The agents are people that they move and seduce with their teachings, and then they become the agents of the false lies.

They are insincere, so they lie. They have seared consciences. This is just so graphic.

It's done through the insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared.

It actually uses this word insincerity. It's the word hypocrisy, right?

They're hypocritical liars. Demons use those who have abandoned the truth to propagate lies.

And often they're very, very nice people. This might have been your point, Peter. You can see they're very nice people.

And this is why it's so hard for a lot of people in evangelical circles to say, wait a minute, no, no, no.

He's not demonically energized. He's a nice man. He's so kind and loving.

And you could just go right down the list, right? And yet that's not the issue. You have to take that person's teaching and see if it is in line with the word of God every time.

And try to get the emotional part out of it. In 2 Corinthians 11, 13 and 14,

Paul describes apostate false teachers. They're not people sitting there with their heads spinning around, you know, and puking out split pea soup.

They're not dancing around in a clearing in a jungle someplace, chopping up a chicken in front of a bonfire, spraying chicken blood all over themselves.

They are very respectable, kind people who, in many ways, they minister to people.

They feed people. They do all kinds of good works. And yet if they are teaching false doctrine, they fit this category.

Paul says, 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. Once again, there's a statement of their judgment. They look good.

They sound good. They are kind. They're loving. They help people. Those churches or those denominations, those groups, might have massive charitable works that they're doing, right?

I mean, we can all see it. We can all identify it. But that's not what Paul's talking about. He wants to make sure that we understand what counts as the truth, the word of God, what he's calling the faith.

And the reason this happens is because their consciences are seared.

Very graphic. In some of your translations, it might even say seared with a hot iron.

The conscience is so critical. It's so important. Cautorizo. We have the word.

We've transliterated that word. Cautorize, right? That's what it means. If you burn yourself, you create scar tissue that becomes insensitive.

This is what happens to somebody's conscience if they reject the word of God and if they repeatedly reject the word of God.

And the issue of time is involved too. If this goes on for a long period of time, then their conscience can become, as Scripture says, could become hardened.

Their hearts are hardened. Their conscience, as Paul says, could become seared. And then it is a very difficult situation.

They become enslaved to their lies. And then what happens? They slander.

The slander of apostasy. Well, of course, they're insincere, so they lie. Their consciences are seared.

Again, this is back to do they really realize it? Probably not. What they're saying is probably considered to be the truth to them.

False Gospels are not presented as false Gospels. They're presented as the truth. And they would say so and they would think so.

And it says, who forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth.

These people slander in the sense of they lie about the Gospel, they lie about the

Word of God, but they also lie to people and they impose regulations on people that the

Bible does not impose. They forbid marriage. They require abstinence from food.

Basically, they forbid two things, to marry, to partake, and to partake of food.

We can all think of groups that have done this historically. Some of them still do. The reason they do this is because they want to impose these legalities on people in order to control them.

They want to do that because it's part of the lie. And look what they're violating.

It's right back to creation. Foods that God created. This again, foundational to everything

Paul thinks and everything in the Scripture is creation. And he goes right back to it. God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth.

For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is made holy by the

Word of God and prayer. What's the solution to apostasy? Well, back to Scripture, back to the

Word of God, back to understanding God's created order. Paul's already dealt with this previously, right?

He's back to it here. And God's Word to be taught. God's Word to be proclaimed.

Back to the Word of God. And when he says everything created by God is good, and it's made holy by the

Word of God and prayer, there's a variety of opinions as to what he's talking about here. I think the best one is to say it's not that somehow you proclaim something over something and change it, like the

Catholic issue of transubstantiation. No piece of bread or no cracker has ever been changed ever by anybody's prayer, even though it goes on thousands of times a day all over the world.

It's still just a piece of bread. So that doesn't sanctify it in any way, shape or form.

Even thanking God for our food, which is a good thing to do, eat with thankfulness. But I think what he's talking about here in the context, everything created, sanctified by the

Word of God. Why? Well, there's Genesis 131 down there at the bottom. God saw everything that he had made and behold, it was very good.

The Word of God has sanctified everything God has created, right? In that sense.

I think that's the best way to understand that. And also by the Word of God and prayer.

Well, what's he talking about there? If it is received with thanksgiving, who's going to receive it with thanksgiving?

The people who know the truth and who believe. Back up in verse 3. So I think very simply you can understand it from the context what he's talking about there.

So beware of apostasy. And it's going to happen. It is. We can see it all around us.

The source of apostasy underlying the teachings of false teachers is demonic activity.

Themselves apostates. And then these people become slaves and they slander.

And the solution is back to the Word of God. Back to understanding God's created order.

Back to applying scripture. If there's a question about a doctrine, we go back to the Word of God to understand it so that we can accurately see what

God is doing here. But it is obviously, and I can tell by your questions, that this is a huge issue.

It's critical. It's important. But we also have to remember that we offer the grace of God all the time.

And we offer the gospel. And so, you know, as we take this and apply it, we have to remind people that it doesn't do to sign up for something.

It doesn't work to attend church. You may be a very nice person, a very good person. You probably are.

You're a faithful husband, a hardworking mother, a caring mother. But God has a different standard.

His standard is his own righteousness, not a righteousness that we look at.

And that righteousness can only be applied to you through faith in Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

And we have to tell people that and we have to encourage them. Even if you've been coming to church for a long time, even if you're a member of a church, maybe you've been associated with a group of people who claim to be

Christians or it's a Christian organization or system for a long period of time, you must be born again.

That's what Jesus said. And that only happens through your repentance of your sin and faith in Jesus Christ.

And so we encourage people to do that and to do it now.

Don't wait. Any other thoughts that you might have? I'm sure there are.

I keep asking that. I know there are. We've raised a lot of questions here. Yes, sir.

That's right. Yeah, which is a works, which falls in the category of a works righteousness system.

Now, they would argue with that and say, oh, no, we believe in salvation by God's grace. The question is, is it

God's grace alone? In other words, they would say, well, this is one of the sacraments that gives you the grace to help you merit salvation.

They would never pronounce somebody justified like Scripture does. Remember, we saw Abraham last week.

He believed God and it was reckoned to him as righteousness. He's justified before God. That can never happen in the

Catholic system. Well, I mean, it just doesn't. That's a good example of a system that cannot help people in any way, shape or form.

So, OK, well, let's pray together before we go. Our Father, we do thank you for your word this morning in your spirit.

We thank you for your grace in our lives, and we would just pray that you would help us to continue to communicate that grace in whatever situation you put us.

We also thank you for your sovereignty in these things. Sovereign over all things, sovereign over our salvation.

And we know that nothing takes you by surprise and that you are working out your perfect plan of redemption.

And so we just pray that you would continue to help us be a part of that, help us to be faithful in all that we do.

And we just thank you for all that you're doing through this fellowship and through each one individually. We pray that you would continue to do that.

you be glorified in it. Amen. Amen.