The Here I Stand Theology Podcast Episode 9 (Steven Furtick's false teaching)

Podcast Intro, Housekeeping, and the Plan for Evaluating Stephen Furtick

And welcome back to the next episode of the Here I Stand Theology Podcast. Here I Stand, usually Matt is there to say, I can do no other, and then together we'll say, God help me. But I'll say it by myself today, Matt is on a little hiatus.

However, I want him to realize while he's on hiatus that we still want to recognize the fact that he is a vitally important part of this podcast. And so with that being said, we'll show to Matt. To Matt, the baddest man in cartoon land.

Bad, bad Matt. All right, Matt, we do miss you, man. We look forward to our next episode together. We're going to be doing an episode on creeds and confessions. We are going to be having Kevin Michael with us on the episode.

So we're looking forward to that as well. And before we get into this episode, let's also not forget our friends over at Righteous Wretch. We want to make sure that you go and support them. They're doing some great work for the Kingdom of God.

They are selling and producing some great Christian gear. I encourage you to go get some, by the way. I should have already had my hat on. I didn't, however. And so that being said, let's take a look at the promo.

So don't forget, go over to righteouswretch .com, get you some great Christian gear today. Use the promo code HIS21. That's Here I Stand, HIS21. Get some great gear. That'll help them out. It'll help us out as well very quickly.

Let's show the disclaimer. All right, that being done, that's all the housekeeping out of the way. Let's move forward. Today, in this episode of the Here I Stand Theology Podcast, we're going to be examining actually two sermons of Stephen Furtick.

But do not let that scare you away. We are going to keep it to a minimum time as possible. We have about 25 minutes worth of clips that we're going to look through, so it's likely we'll be an hour on the episode.

That way you can prepare for what's coming ahead. We want to also say that when we look and examine these sermons, when we quote unquote critique these sermons, we are not critiquing them by the standard of how well someone speaks, how eloquent they are, how good they look, whether they look good or they look bad, whether they're muscleheads or whether they're pipsqueaks.

That's regardless whether they've got a suit and tie or whether they've got a sweater on. It does not matter. We're not talking about style when we're examining a sermon. When we examine a sermon, we are looking and listening to the sermon to see if the content is correct.

Now, a biblical sermon will be, you guessed it, biblically sound. It ought to be measured for if someone is claiming to be speaking in the name of God, we need to be able to measure what they say by the standard, and the standard is the Word of God.

It is the Scripture itself. So when we examine a sermon, we want to make sure that there's biblically sound content in the sermon. Again, rhetoric is beside the point. We're missing the point if we're listening to a sermon for clever or cool rhetoric, clever or cool reasoning, or if we're looking for the cultural norms of the day to be highlighted within that sermon so as to make it appear relevant and hip.

We're not talking about that because the truth is that the Word of God is just as relevant today as it ever has been, and it will ever and forever be relevant because the condition of man is the same.

Man is a sinner. Let's proclaim the gospel right up front here. Man is a sinner according to the Word of God because of the fall in the garden of Eden. Adam and Eve sinned against the thrice-holy God.

Therefore, they fell, and God, having made a provision, a sacrifice, killed an animal, gave them coverings for their skins, foreshadowing and typifying what Christ Jesus, our Lord, was going to do on the cross to pay the forever price for sin.

So, Christ died for sinners according to the Scripture. He was buried, and on the third day, He arose. So, the basis and the standard for salvation for a preacher's message should always be that man is a sinner, separated from God by our sin.

Christ Jesus lived a perfect life, the life we could not live in His active obedience. He fulfilled the law of God in His passive obedience. He undertook upon Himself the wrath of God and was crucified by the hands of wicked men, buried, put in the tomb.

Three days later, He arose victorious, never to die again, the only person ever in the history of the world to die, raise again, and remain alive. So, that being said, when we listen to a sermon, we ought to be looking for biblically sound content.

So, let's look today for just a few minutes, and what we're going to do is we are going to look at a Stephen Furtick, two Stephen Furtick sermons, and this is the reason. So, we're going to look at two of his sermons because the first half of the time we're going to spend on his sermon is from a sermon in 2019 entitled, My Maker is My Mirror.

And then the second half, we are going to look at some clips from a sermon from just week before last, and the sermon is entitled, Too Grown to Give Up. Now, on your screen, you may see that this is not a high-definition image that we have that's intentional.

I have put a filter on his video. It's the raster effect in iMovie. That's simply what I use there. Put the raster effect on it so as to alter it just so much that him and his mafia don't come after us for copyright infringement.

So, that being said, let's begin. Let's remember that we are examining the sermon for content, for biblically sound content. So, when we're listening, we're listening to see does what he says jive with the Word of God.

So, let's take a listen.

Self-Image, Abraham, and Moses in My Maker Is My Mirror

Here we go. But when God called him, his stuff wasn't even working anymore. And the reason I'm telling you that is because sometimes God will speak something over your life and you will look.

In the mirror and not see it. So, there, first and foremost, within the first 10 -15 seconds, right where we came in, so he's already given his introduction. And so, if you didn't listen carefully or if you thought maybe it didn't matter, remember the content of what's being said matters greatly.

The content matters greatly. So, what he says here, he's speaking about Abraham. And in speaking about Abraham, what he's doing there, he begins by talking about how God gave the promise to Abraham. But in a public setting, he says, so his stuff didn't work.

And then he said,.

Listen to what he said. But when God called him, his stuff wasn't even working anymore. And the reason I'm telling you that is because sometimes God will speak something over your life.

And you will look in the mirror and not see it. So, immediately, we can see that this sermon isn't pointing us to Christ. Although, throughout the sermon, if you listen to it in its entirety, and I'm going to be completely transparent, if you listen to it in its entirety, he'll mention Jesus.

He'll quote some scriptures about Jesus. They'll get excited about Jesus, but the emphasis always comes back to you. The emphasis and the focus is on you and what you need to do, how Abraham's faith is an example of what you need to do.

Abraham's faith pointed to Christ. It does not point to us. It does not truly have anything to do with us becoming better. Abraham's faith pointed to Christ. He'll speak something in your soul and you'll look in the.

Mirror and you won't see it, which is so important to know that it's not how God sees you that determines where your life ends up. If it had been, Moses wouldn't have died in the wilderness. It's not how God sees me.

It's how I think God sees me. It's not how God sees me. It's how...

You might be asking yourself, did he just say that it's not important how God sees you? What's really important, he says, is how you think God sees you. Now, a lot of folks can think a lot of things, and what it boils down to in reality is that as sinful men, we always think more highly of ourselves than we ought to think.

But what are we taught in the scriptures? Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought to think of yourself, but consider yourselves in the light of that this is not what he's teaching. I think God sees me.

That determines where I end up. I prove it to you. Now, here, let me say this. We ought to affirm the word of God. If while you are at church on Sunday and your preacher prepares throughout the week, studies, prays, has the word of God for you, lays the bountiful feast of the word of God out in front of you, and he's proclaiming the word of God from beginning to end in the sermon, then you, as a Christian, you ought to affirm the word of God.

In the Old Testament, we have the example when the law was read. They would bow their heads, and they would raise their hands, and they would say, amen, giving affirmation, confirmation to the word. Saying amen to the word of God, giving that affirmation is very biblical.

You ought to do it. You will be amazed how it does the entire congregation good to hear folks affirming the word of God rather than hearing folks nod off and snore and snort and go on. Pay attention, focus, listen to what's being said when the preacher is preaching because he is either telling you the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, or he might very well be teaching you a half-truth.

You need to be able to identify half-truths. Or, in this case, he might be telling you a flat-out lie, and you need to be able to discern the difference between truth and error, and that is according to the word of God.

Are you able to do that? Listen to their responses. God sees me. It's how I think God sees me that determines where I end up. I'll prove it to you.

All the way from Genesis 1. Remember? Let us make man in our image. God needed someone to show the world what he looked like, or else he would have just been a concept. God would have been an abstract theory, so he made man and woman to reflect who he was.

He needed someone to show.

His nature through, so he made me and you. Let me calm myself for just a moment before I say anything. So, in no uncertain terms, he just said, and this is 2019, he said, God needed man so that he could show who he was.

The Scriptures do not teach that God needs us. The Scriptures do not teach that God needs man. The Scripture says, as a matter of fact, that Yahweh Elohim, the eternal self-existent God, made from nothing but the words of his mouth, the heavens and the earth, and all that is in it. He created everything.

He does not need us. He's not worried about whether I think, or you think, or Stephen Furtick thinks, or anybody else thinks, if he's an abstract image, unrecognizable. The Scriptures teach us exactly what God has done, that he gives a general revelation through creation, and that he gives special revelation through his holy word.

Through his holy word. Let's move forward. It's how you see it. It's how you see yourself, and I think I can prove to you. It's how you see it. It's how you see yourself. If you give me like.

Two and a half minutes, that the reason the people didn't go into the land under Moses was because Moses never really saw himself in the image of his creator.

So, Moses didn't go into the land of promise because he never saw himself in the image of his creator. False. False. We know this because in Exodus 3, Moses is tending the flock of his father Jethro, the priest of Midian.

He's watching the flock. God appears to him in the burning bush, right? Says, take your shoes from off your feet for the place where you're standing is holy ground, right? And he recognized God. He recognized God.

He knew that he was but a creature, and that the creator was speaking to him. But this narrative that Stephen Furtick is spinning, although you've got to be honest, it's easy to get pulled into this. It's easy to get pulled into this because he is truly an eloquent speaker.

He does know how to turn a phrase. He does know how to emotionally charge the crowds. However, it's a false hype. It's a false emotionalism.

Abram did. Abram did, even though he had a hard time getting with it, even though he was like, you got any pills for that or anything like that because I'm old now, and even though he had to wait for Isaac and he messed up in the process and ended up producing something that caused him trouble by sleeping with Hagar, even though all of that happened, God still called him the father of faith, the father of many nations.

And to show him who he was, he brought him out of his tent, out of his limitation, out of his situation. And he said, okay, here's your revelation.

Here's your situation. Do you see how he positioned that? So there was nothing about revelation. God brought him out of his tent, brought him out of his situation, and then unconsciously we're assuming that he was given a special revelation.

Out of your situation, and now look up. And he said, count the stars if you can. I don't know how far he got before he was. Like, what's the point of God? I can't, you know, 343, 344. What are you trying to show me?

And God said, as many as they are, so shall your descendants be. So shall your seed be. So he gives him an image, an image, not just an idea, but an image.

So let me say something right there. Very, very important because he's going to quote this a little later from Colossians 115 concerning Christ, that he is the image of the invisible God. Jesus, in the book of John, we see the word used, logos.

In the beginning was the logos, the word. Okay, so we know that Jesus was not a created being. We know that he is the Father, the Son, the Spirit, co-equal, co-eternal, consubstantial, all of those things, true Christian orthodoxy on the Trinity.

But what he, the way he is framing this, he is framing this as though the idea of Christ is equal to the ideas in the image, the picture that you have of where you want to go, that these two are equal.

Anytime that Christ is ever put on an equal plane to anything concerning his creatures is false teaching. We must be able to recognize this. Colossians 115,.

Look it up real quick, says that Jesus is the image of the invisible God. That's very powerful that Jesus shows us what God is like, that the word became flesh and dwelled among us. That's what Jesus is.

He is the image of the God that we can't see. Did I get it right? Colossians 115, that he is the image of the invisible God. This is the challenge for everybody under the sound of my voice. There is a way that God sees you because he formed you.

There is a way that you see you. There is a way that others see you. Where you go from this point forward in your life.

Is going to depend on which mirror you believe. He steps away from the pulpit as though he's going to drop the mic on that. There's a way God sees you. There's a way other people see you, and there's a way that you see yourself.

He's already laid the foundation that it doesn't matter what God thinks of you, but it's what you think God thinks of you. It's whatever the image of God that you have in your mind thinks and approves of you and your doings.

You are going to hear a diminishment of the heinous nature of sin within this sermon, these two sermons.

When Moses was coming into his identity and assignment….

Identity and assignment. These are more catchphrases. You'll hear identity and assignment in a lot of the NAR apostolic movement preaching and teaching. You hear it in a large swath of general evangelicalism today.

You hear this terminology used because it seems to really play to the masses. Step into your identity and your assignment. There is nothing in this text that talks about identity and assignment. He had to deal with the fact that he was.

Really living with two different images of who he was. Remember, God is using Moses to deliver the Israelites out of this Egyptian oppression. When Moses first starts to act on his impulse, he does the right thing, but he does it the wrong way.

He defends his people, but he does it by murdering an Egyptian. So, he's ahead of his time, and he's out of his zone,.

But he's doing the right thing. He still doesn't know who he is yet,.

And it's difficult for him because he doesn't really fit in with either group he's living with. The Hebrews are the people he was born from. The Egyptians are the people he was raised by, but he identifies more with the people he was born from than the people he was raised by.

So, he doesn't really fit in. When you don't really fit in to either group, you end up running.

So, here is where he is bringing…. Again, carefully listening, carefully paying attention to how he's formulating his message. It's constantly coming back to you, your identity, your assignment, and how this plays into his speech.

That's what happened to Moses. He confronted an Egyptian who was beating a Hebrew one day, and he killed him and buried him. But then the next day, he went out and saw two of his brothers fighting, and he was like, "'Break it up, guys.

We're suffering enough from them. We don't have to kill each other.'". This is in Exodus, chapter 2. I want to show it to you real quick. The man said back to him, "'Who has made you a prince and a judge over us?

Do you mean to kill me, as you have killed the Egyptian?'. Then Moses was afraid and thought, "'Surely the thing is known,' and he ran.". We don't really see him in his next stage of his assignment until 40 years later.

He ran, because he was to Hebrew to be an Egyptian and to Egyptian to be a Hebrew. When you don't really fit in with either, you don't know who you are, and you spend years of your life running from who you really are, looking in the mirror of your last mistake.

He ran and he ran and he ran, and see, the question is the right one. He said,.

"'Who made you?'. Now listen, he just read the text, and what the text said was that the Hebrew said…". Let's read it right there with him. "'Do you mean to kill me,.

As you have killed the Egyptian?'. Then Moses was afraid and thought, "'Surely the thing is known,' and he ran, and he ran, and see, the question is the right one. He said, "'Who made you?'. "'Who made you?'.

"'Wow, wow, wow.'". "'But if you don't know that.'".

Yeah, the question wasn't to Moses, who made you? The question to Moses was, who made you a ruler over us? It is so clever, the way that this is put in there. It is spectacular. And by the way, this is one of the main reasons that I think Elevation's church, Stephen Furtick's, where he's pastor, I think they founded it in 2016, so it's been just five years.

They have, I can't remember how many locations. What is it? Oh, here we go. 20 locations. 20 locations they have. Weekly attendance. Are you ready? You might want to sit down for this. Weekly attendance over throughout all the locations, 25 ,317 people.

So this message is popped in to all of these churches, so everybody is getting this. Large numbers of people are drinking this Kool-Aid, and that's exactly what I'm calling it, and I'm unashamedly calling it that, because the people of God are not being discerning Berean listeners as we ought to be.

We ought to be concerned about the content of the message that is coming from the pulpits from churches around America. You will hand other people.

Your mirror to show you who you are. Let me tell you something about people. People would rather define you by your worst mistake. What's crazy about Moses is he killed a man, and there's only one verse in the Bible about the murder.

Now, if you let church people write the Bible, they would have had a whole book. It would be called The Book of Moses' Murder, The Book of Moses' Mistake, The Book of Debbie's Divorce, The Book of Your Lowest Moment.

But maybe God doesn't see you through the lens of your mistake. Maybe he sees you through the lens of his grace. Maybe when he looks at you, he sees the finished work of Jesus Christ. Have you ever thought about the fact that if they didn't make you, they can't define you?

My Maker is my mirror. I promise I'm trying to be as calm as I can be, but when God showed me that, my Maker is my mirror, he showed me Moses standing in front of the burning bush, and God is like, I'm going to use you.

You're going to be the one to do it. You're the one who has had the conflicted identity and so many mistakes, and you don't even really believe in yourself. So, I was thinking about you and how you might be standing in front.

Of something that God is speaking to you. You see how he is immediately turning this?

He's turning it to you. And it's burning on the inside, but you can't really locate yourself because honestly, you don't fit into either group. You don't really fit in with really churchy people.

So, yeah, you're like Moses. You're like Abraham. No, we're not. We're not like Moses, and we're not like Abraham. We are ourselves, our own people, separated from God by our sin. God does not need us to write further new revelation.

We're not trying to write a new scripture. We're not trying to reenact the old scriptures. We're trying to live according to the truth of the old scriptures themselves. Because they are so perfect, and they pray so much,.

And they make Bible verses out of their kids' sandwiches before they pack them in the lunch. Come on. Telling you that you're something greater than that, and you're kind of righteous, but you're kind of wretched.

You're all the way, you wretched. Worship, and you're kind of organized,.

But you're kind of chaotic, and you're kind of powerful, but you're kind of petty. I'm preaching to somebody. You're a little bit of both. Your self-concept is in development, and this is when it's very important who holds your mirror.

If the wrong people show you, you'll get a distorted image of yourself. Feel that tension. It's called a mirror neuron. Here's what was happening while you were singing, "'This Is How I Fight My Battles.'".

Somebody out there was going through a battle, but they'd been feeling like they were losing, but God put you out here as a mirror. So now all of a sudden, they didn't feel victorious this week, but when they saw you worshiping God….

Don't run from me. I got you by this leather coat. When they saw you worshiping God, they didn't feel like they had the victory, but while you were shouting the victory… I wonder if you would do that for somebody on your row right now.

I know you had a hard week too, but magnify the Lord with me. Let us exalt his name together. If you don't have faith today, borrow mine. You're going to make it. I said so.

Let's be honest right there. That was exciting. That was inspirational, but we can't call that inspired. The inspired text of Scripture ought to be the energizing and the exciting force in the worship service for us.

That ought to be the driving factor. Now, again, he's very encouraging, and let me be honest here as well and say this. I cannot see his heart. I don't know his motive. Personally, I don't know his motive.

However, I can say that even if his motive is genuine and wanting to help people, which it likely is, I believe it's very easy for us to get misguided in our affections and with our motives and even have a kind of a self-justified reason for doing the things that we do, but they must always be weighed against and according to the Word of God.

Moving right along.

There were the Nephilim, the sons of Anak, who come from the Nephilim. There were giants in the land, big, strong adversaries we would have to dispossess to take the land, and we seemed to ourselves like grasshoppers.

Not to God. We seemed to ourselves like grasshoppers.

Do you see yourself as a grasshopper?

God is in you.

Which, if we simply engage our minds and consider logically what he just said, it doesn't matter how you see God. It's how much you see God in you. Our view of God is always going to be proportionate to our knowledge of God.

If you have a small knowledge of God, your view will never be bigger than your knowledge. Your view will never be greater than your knowledge of God, and our knowledge of God comes from the Scriptures, and the Scriptures alone.

Not from seeing, looking into ourselves, but to looking unto the Scriptures. This is very important.

We seemed to ourselves as grasshoppers, and so we seem to them. Our reflection determined our reality.

So, if you see yourself as a grasshopper, the giants are going to get you.

And I always thought it was funny because he's like, hey, Joshua, I know you're rolling these little lots around.

So, he's going to start telling us here about Joshua and Caleb and his claim to Hebron, and then he's going to make a very uninspired reference when he says, sea level.

Around on the ground to figure out who lives where, but remember, God gave me a promise that I would live in the high place. I want Hebron. Three thousand feet above sea level.

I'm going to have to take a month off after I preach this message.

I'm giving you everything I got. You've been living at sea level. You've been looking in the wrong mirror. You've been consulting the mirror for your flesh. You put 20 minutes into your makeup today, but you didn't get in this mirror right here.

This is a mirror too. This is a mirror too. You've been struggling over external issues, but what about what's in you?

Again, looking to yourself. Let's take just a minute to look to James, the book of James, and see what the book of James actually says here. And we'll go a little bit bigger on the screen for the scriptures here.

So, considering looking into the perfect law of liberty, which is the word of God, and particularly in context, it's the law of God to the hearers here. So, the word of God says in James chapter 1, let's look at 19 on for context.

So, know this, my beloved brothers, let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, and slow to anger. For the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God. Therefore, put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls.

So, receive with meekness the implanted word, what God has given. And then he said, but be doers of the word and not hearers only, for you are deceiving yourself. If anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his face, natural face in a mirror, for he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like.

But the one who looks into the perfect law of liberty and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets, but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing. Do you see that? That looking into the perfect law of liberty, looking into God's word.

The psalmist put it this way. Actually, the psalmist said, Psalm 119 particularly, the psalmist writes that he lists God's law, God's statutes, God's commandments, God's ordinances. He lists all of those things as the standard and the things that he loves.

It's not about looking inside. When you look inside yourself, all that we will find is sin.

James said something curious. He said, if you listen to the word and don't do it,.

You're like a man who looks at himself in a mirror. See how he makes the reference.

In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God.

My maker is my mirror. I can't run around to people who are struggling with their own.

Sense of self to determine mine. God is raising you up right now. He's doing it through a process. The level you will settle on is the level you see yourself. It makes me so sad to think of how many times you and I have gone to the wrong mirrors.

We see a grasshopper when we're really a giant.

Do you see? Were you able to recognize that he just completely flipped on what he said earlier?

When God said, I am to Moses, you know, my name is, I am. He was trying to get him to see.

You are as I am. Inconceivable.

You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means. Are you kidding me?

Are you kidding me? Let's listen to that again. When God said, I am to Moses, you know,.

My name is, I am. He was trying to get him to see you are as I am.

Scoobalon. That is garbage. That is heresy equating man with God. But I know that whether they show up or not. All of that 2019, my maker is my mirror. The sermon. Now we move to May 16th, 2021. When this, this sermon was posted, we see that he's had two years to, to, to learn, to grow, to, um, to repent, to change the message.

Um, and so here it is a week and a half ago.

Moses, Maturity, and the Problem of Turning the Gospel into Self-Help

God is right there with you right now. So we're not waiting for next week. Somebody say, I need a word from God right now, right now, right now, right now, right now, right now. And so now he uses the example of baby Moses.

I don't know if you saw that in verse 23. Let's look at it again. It talks about how when he was little and the Pharaoh had issued an edict to kill all the firstborn of Israel, because while they were living in Egypt, they became very powerful.

And he knew that if they became too powerful, they would no longer serve his purpose. Therefore he, he set up a system by which the midwives, when they were delivering these Hebrew babies would kill all the firstborn children.

Moses' parents had the faith to see the purpose of their child or the potential of their child when he was still just a baby. And that's a beautiful thing. If you've ever had someone see potential in you before you saw it in.

Yourself, that's a beautiful thing. So of course we want, we want to be encouraging. We want to help people, but here he immediately is shaping the funnel. He is shaping the focus of the message and the focus is not aimed toward Jesus Christ, but the aim is you and the potential that you have within yourself.

How many of you have ever had somebody that you just.

Borrowed some of their belief in you? Yeah. It's a, it's an awesome thing. People like aunt Jackie, who told me God has a very special plan for you. He has a really special plan for you. And at the time when she was saying that to me, right, because that's something that sounds really good.

It's something that maybe, you know, if you hear that in your own, right, you could, you could fill that with your own preferences of what that plan is, but she said it to me, but the beauty of it was that she saw it in its baby form.

So here we go. The connection, right? Baby Moses is, and saw the, um, opportunity within him as a baby. And so maybe, and this is always the aim of these, of these false teachers. So maybe there's potential in you and it's, and it's in baby form and you just need to find that.

She saw it in its baby form. She believed in what was in me in baby form and see Moses, his parents had the faith to see the significance in what was hidden.

And the author of Hebrews, you have to understand. So this, um, this is Gnostic language. Um, again, it's so popular and it's the idea that's pushed so much. And if every preacher's honest, we've all been guilty of, of leaning that way.

But when you are confronted with the truth of the scriptures as a preacher, as a preacher of the gospel of Jesus Christ, we are not called to proclaim anything. We are not called to teach anything other than what is specifically laid out for us in the scripture.

We're not to morph it into something that it's not, but we're to preach the gospel as it is to men as they are.

Stan, he's giving us a picture of those who did not quit on what God called them to do. And to give us a picture of those who didn't quit, he shows us someone who was almost killed before he even had an opportunity to be called.

The thing that I, that I want you to know is that everything significant that I ever did in life, I was tempted to quit. I am preaching this message to somebody today who is tempted to quit on something God called you to do.