FBC Morning Light – October 14, 2023

It's Saturday morning, people of faith. We're going to be reading in Jeremiah chapter 29 this morning.

Now before I read this morning, let me give you a little bit of background. At the start of Jeremiah chapter 29,

Jeremiah is writing a letter to the people who have been exiled to Babylon as a letter of encouragement to them.

And so we're going to start reading in verse 4.

Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all who were carried away captive, whom

I have caused to be carried away from Jerusalem to Babylon. Build houses and dwell in them.

Plant gardens and eat their fruit. Take wives and beget sons and daughters and take wives for your sons and give your daughters to husbands so that they may bear sons and daughters, that you may be increased there and not diminished.

And seek the peace of the city where I have caused you to be carried away captive and pray to the

Lord for it, for in its peace you will have peace. For thus says the

Lord of hosts, the God of Israel. Do not let your prophets and your defenders who are in your midst deceive you.

Listen to your dreams, which you caused to be dreamed for they prophesy falsely to you in my name.

I have not sent them, says the Lord. For thus says the Lord, after 70 years are completed at Babylon, I will visit you and perform my good word toward you and cause you to return to this place.

For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil to give you a future and a hope.

So what we have going on here is that there's many people from Jerusalem who have been exiled to Babylon under Nebuchadnezzar's rule.

And there are some false prophets there who are apparently telling everybody, hey, don't get married.

You're not going to be here for very long. You're going to be sent back right away. And that's not the case.

So the Lord has words for them that, look, I haven't forgotten you, but this has happened because of the wrong that you've done.

And with that, don't listen to these false prophets.

So a couple of things that's always good to remember. First of all, this promise here in verse 11 to give you a hope and a future, that's a promise to those exiles in Babylon.

And yet it's still true in a sense for us.

The Lord in his decree over everything has plans for us too.

But we ought not to try and take this verse as a direct application to us.

What I want to caution us though about today is verses 8 and 9.

Says, for thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, do not let your prophets and your diviners who are in your midst deceive you.

Well, in our day and age, we aren't exiles to Babylon, but we definitely have deceivers in our midst.

And I wanted to go over a couple of them and just give you a list of and some categories to be wary of.

So I've broken up these lists into three groups.

The first group is a group that would distort the gospel. Well, who are these people?

They are prosperity gospel teachers who would teach us that the material blessings, they would tell us that God is more interested in your material blessing than he is your spiritual wealth or your spiritual well -being.

Another distortion of the gospel is the word of faith movement, emphasizing your words and giving your words more power than the sovereignty of God.

Universalism is a distortion of the gospel saying that, well, eventually everybody gets saved and all three of these are filled with falsehood.

The second category is a distortion of the Trinity, all right? The Father, the

Son, and the Holy Spirit, three persons in one God, all right?

First distortion is the oneness movement that says God is one person in three different roles, wears three different hats.

This is obviously false if you read the baptism of Jesus narrative.

Um, it's just not, it's, it's been, it's, it's, it's often called modalism.

It's not, not biblical Christianity. Uh, Arianism was a heresy from long back, but there's groups now that teach it, that, that deny the full deity of Christ.

Um, you would be surprised in how this is done, that Jesus is just an elevated, created being.

The, this is another falsehood to avoid. And then Unitarianism, which denies

Jesus's deity altogether and just says, God, the Father is the only God. Um, all, all of those would be distortions of the

Trinity. And finally, a distortion of scripture, and this is probably the most dangerous one to, to us.

Um, liberal Christianity would, would clearly fall into this category where they say the

Bible contains the word of God rather than the Bible is the word of God. So when it contains it, you have to search through it and find it.

And then somehow, somehow you can figure it out when, when God speaks to you as you read it.

Uh, no, no, the Bible is the word of God. And then finally, uh, uh, syncretism, and that word means to blend different beliefs together, a blending of perhaps

Eastern mysticism or, or paganism or different things with Christianity. And what comes out is no longer

Christianity, even though it has some of the markings of Christianity.

So anyway, um, we don't normally think about these things. I know, uh, um, that it's best to, uh, avoid the falsehood by knowing the reality of God's word.

Uh, but every once in a while, it's okay to talk about some of the errors to watch out for.

Let's pray. Heavenly father, thank you for your word and the caution to not listen to the false prophets.

And, uh, may you guard us from any false prophets that might be among us that would lead us astray in any of these areas.

It's in your son's name, Jesus. We pray. Amen. Have an excellent day, people of faith.