(Part 2) “Mishandling The Word of God”

Good evening. If you would, please turn in your Bibles to the gospel of John.

The gospel of John chapter three, and this will be a continuation of the message from a couple of weeks ago on mishandling or twisting the scripture.

It seems to me that God's word these days, mainly it's mishandled through this overemphasis on love.

And of course, we know that God is a loving God. God so loved the world. God is love is what the scripture says, but sometimes that is so overemphasized.

It's at the expense of everything else. So let's look at John chapter three, starting in verse 16.

The scripture says, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

Amen. Amen. And now let's skip down to verse 36 of the same chapter.

It says, he who believes in the son has everlasting life.

And he who does not believe in the son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.

This is the word of God. You may be seated. So God has love.

The scripture says, God is love. And we say, what to that? We say, amen.

Amen. But we also see that God has wrath.

Same God, different attribute. Last time we looked at that passage from 1

John chapter four, and we saw how ironic it was that the same passage that says

God is love, in that same passage, we also see the concept of an angry

God who needs to have his wrath and divine justice satisfied.

And of course, God's wrath was satisfied on the cross.

Jesus was, he is the propitiation for our sins.

So it's all been dealt with then, right? Wrong. For believers, it has been dealt with.

For God's elect, it has been dealt with. For unbelievers, it has not been dealt with.

And even still believers can still be chastened by God. But what is happening today, false teachers and false prophets are cherry picking parts of the

Bible that they like and ignoring everything else. These are people who, as I said, are mishandling the word of God.

They are twisting the scripture as the apostle Peter says. And you know, there's nothing new under the sun.

The church of Jesus Christ from its earliest days has had to contend with false prophets and false teachers, even false apostles.

Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, he warned his followers. He said, beware of false prophets who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves.

In Revelation chapter two, verse two, Jesus commends the church at Ephesus saying, you have tested those who say they are apostles and are not, and have found them to be liars.

And as I said last time, this topic of false teachers, false apostles is a major theme in the

Bible. Certainly it is a major theme that runs straight through the New Testament.

In fact, most of the New Testament epistles, almost all of them were written in part because they're trying to correct the false teaching.

There were false teachers trying to corrupt the faith. So things have not changed.

Let's turn to 2 Corinthians chapter 11, if you would. 2 Corinthians chapter 11.

In the Bible on the pages of the New Testament, there were two main threats and these same threats are around today.

On the one hand, you have the Judaizers who were the legalists. They misused the word of God and they taught basically a works salvation.

On the other side, you had the antinomians who rejected God's law. The legalists said, you need to be circumcised, you need to do this, you need to do that in order to be saved.

The antinomians said, well, you believe in Jesus, but then you can just go out and do whatever you want.

Both were wrong. Both were teaching false doctrine. And then there were other heresies in the early church where the deity, the person and work of Christ were, he was attacked, his work was attacked and that's continued right on to the modern day.

So something to look out for. Anytime there's false teaching, it's somebody usually they are, yeah, mishandling the word of God, but they are attacking the person and work of Christ.

Either they're doing that or they're mishandling God's law. It's gonna be one or the other.

Just to impress this upon you, but 2 Corinthians 11, verse four, look at that verse.

Paul speaks of those who preach what? Another Jesus. Did you know there's another

Jesus? Someone can say, I believe in Jesus. Well, amen, but which

Jesus do you believe in? There are other Jesuses. There's one true

Jesus though of scripture. There is one Lord, amen. One Lord, one faith, one baptism, but there are people who preach another

Christ. They preach a different gospel and it causes people to receive a different spirit other than the

Holy Spirit. We'll get into the text in just a moment, but in the past couple of hundred years, just to give you some examples, many false prophets and false apostles have risen up.

In the early 1800s, Joseph Smith, the founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day

Saints, also called the Mormons, he preached another Jesus. The Christ of Mormonism teaches that Jesus is not

God. He is the spirit brother of Lucifer and his father, they call heavenly father, he was once a sinful man living on another planet.

And through the rites and rituals of Mormonism, you could actually ascend to godhood and you could one day rule your own planet.

Some of you think I'm making that up, but I'm not. Then in the late 1800s, another man named

Charles Taze Russell, who denied the deity of Christ as well, he founded the

Watchtower Bible and Tract Society. This group became known as the

Jehovah's Witnesses. Incidentally, both Joseph Smith and Charles Taze Russell were driven by their denial of the biblical teaching on hell.

They didn't like this idea of a God that has wrath.

So they both essentially denied the doctrine of hell. So what did they do?

They twisted the scripture and came up with their own perverted version of Christianity.

Are we seeing a theme here? They didn't like the wrath, they didn't like hell, so they preached a different Jesus, came up with a different gospel, a whole different religion, and they have deceived millions, tens of millions.

And my friends, this same type of thing continues to happen. And I want you to know,

I'm not attacking the people that are caught up in these false systems. I'm not doing that.

I love them and we should all love them enough to tell them the truth. We want to save them from the fire.

So let's look at 2 Corinthians 11, because hopefully at this point, this should be very real to all of us, that we know that it's happening all around.

You know, it's not just the cults and it's not just the rainbow churches. This type of thing can creep into any church if we're not careful.

How do I know that? Because it crept into the Apostle Paul's church. He writes, starting in verse one, "'Oh, that you would bear with me in a little folly.

And indeed you do bear with me, for I am jealous for you with godly jealousy, for I have betrothed you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ.

But I fear, lest somehow, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, so your minds may be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.

For if he who comes preaches another Jesus, whom we have not preached, or if you receive a different spirit, which you have not received, or a different gospel, which you have not accepted, you may well put up with it.'"

And this was the problem, they were putting up with it. So Paul is addressing some of the holdouts in the

Corinthian church, who either remained loyal to the false teachers, or maybe they really weren't sure who to believe.

I mean, you have Paul saying this, and this teacher saying that, and this guy over here saying something else.

How do you know? How do you know? So Paul fears that not only have individuals been led astray, but that the church in general is tolerating all of this.

So you have the ministry of the apostle Paul, and then you have the ministry of the false teachers.

Who is the church listening to? You know, there's a lot of voices out there today. The doctrine that this church teaches, and the doctrine that our church,

Morse Corner Church teaches. Okay, that's evangelical Christianity.

What's an evangelical, by the way? You ever wonder that? What is an evangelical? Yeah, it's somebody who believes the true gospel.

And we are, I would say, within Christianity, the 2 billion people in the world who profess

Christ, I would say we are the minority. So Paul makes reference to Eve being deceived by the serpent.

You remember this story in Genesis chapter three. You remember what God said?

He said, of every tree of the garden, you may freely eat, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat.

And then the serpent comes along and says, has God indeed said, you shall not eat of every tree of the garden?

And Eve is like, well, no. You know, and then she starts thinking, you know, what did

God say? And she pauses and she thinks for a moment.

And now she's in a conversation with the devil. And that's not a good idea.

But what exactly did God say? And then in Genesis chapter three, Eve responds with what she remembers.

And her version, you remember, it's a little different. It's a little different. She's added something to it.

But this is how Satan works. He's subtle. Satan tricks people, doesn't he?

He's very good at it. Satan is able to confuse people. I looked around today and I see a world.

I certainly see a nation that is very confused. So this can happen to anybody.

Don't ever say this could never happen to me. I could never be deceived. You're setting yourself up for a fall if you believe that.

And by the way, no false teacher ever comes out and says, hey, nice to meet you. I'm a false teacher.

That's never happened. They don't do that. What did

Jesus warn about? You were a false prophet to come to you in sheep's clothing. What does that mean?

They appear to be Christians. They are in sheep's clothing.

And you know, you shouldn't even sit there and listen to me and said, well, he's a pastor. He's telling me the truth.

You shouldn't even do that. You should have your Bible in your hand open and you should be testing everything that I say.

How many brought their Bible? Oh, I'm preaching now. How many of you brought your Bibles to church tonight?

Hey, bring your Bible to church every time. But test all things, hold fast to that, which is good.

So false teachers can be very kind and seem very friendly. They can have a great smile.

They can have smooth speech, flattering words. People like that. And sometimes they fall for it.

The Corinthians were falling for it. So there's this battle here in the book of 1

Corinthians between the true apostle Paul and the false apostles. And it got pretty contentious at times.

Look at what Paul says in verse five. He says, for I consider that I am not at all inferior to the most eminent apostles.

Some translations render it this way. I, Paul, am not inferior to these super apostles.

Who has that in their Bible? Super apostles. Hey, that's just flat out sarcastic, man.

I don't know. That is sarcastic. Now, while mockery and sarcasm is not exactly the fruit of the spirit, the prophets and apostles were often that way towards those who were enemies of the faith.

Just a basic principle that I see in scripture, I think Paul followed the example of Jesus.

To the average person, he was very kind, very gracious, and we should always be kind and gracious, speaking the truth to people and doing it in love.

But to those who set themselves against the Lord and opposed the gospel ministry, we heard an example of that a few minutes ago.

A man of the cloth opposing the gospel, right? To people like that, to the scribes and Pharisees, Jesus handled that very, very different, and so did

Paul. The false teachers and false apostles were attacking

Paul's ministry, and now he's basically fighting back. And keep in mind, this isn't

Paul just being personally insulted. Paul knew how to turn the other cheek.

This isn't about retaliating against one's personal enemies. This is about defending the faith.

We need to defend the faith. This generation needs to defend the faith or else what?

Or else we'll lose it. So this is spiritual warfare. This is fighting for the truth.

The fact that this church exists in this building is a victory, amen? It's a victory.

Jude, the half -brother of Jesus said that believers need to contend earnestly for the faith once delivered to the saints.

So Paul is doing that, and he's only defending his apostleship when he really has no other choice.

Look at verse six. He says, even though I am untrained in speech, yet I am not in knowledge, but we have been thoroughly manifested among you in all things.

So Paul has the truth, and he's preaching the true gospel.

But the complaint against Paul is that he wasn't a gifted speaker.

Paul wasn't trained in oratory. His critics back in chapter 10, who remembers what his critics said about his preaching?

It's not really funny, but I can't help but laugh. What did they say about the apostle Paul's preaching?

They said his speech is what? Contemptible. His speech is, we can't stand having to listen to this guy.

I remember one false teacher on television, a famous woman who's still on TV.

She preached a sermon at her church where she actually took up this same complaint against the apostle

Paul. She said that Paul, it wasn't trained in homiletics and hermeneutics like I am.

She said a good preacher who has something to say can do it in a half an hour or less.

Now, I don't actually disagree with that necessarily, but then she cited

Acts chapter 20, where remember that time Paul preached all night long and that young man fell asleep and fell out the window and died?

Paul was so boring, he killed the man, she said. Unbelievable, unbelievable.

Now listen, preaching all night, I don't necessarily blame the kid for falling asleep, but it takes some nerve to get up in a church behind a pulpit and run down the apostle

Paul. I think I know why she doesn't like him. 1 Timothy 2, 12, but anyways.

But the bottom line is Paul. Yeah, amen, all right. Some of you know the reference.

Oh, that's right. Delayed reaction. The bottom line is

Paul is an apostle. Paul is an apostle. He was called by Christ himself.

So to attack Paul and his message is to attack the one he's preaching about, which is

Christ Jesus. So this is how he responds. Skip down to verse 13.

He says, for such are false apostles, deceitful workers transforming themselves into apostles of Christ.

And no wonder for Satan himself. Don't miss this. Satan himself transforms himself into an angel of light.

Therefore it is no great thing if his ministers also transform themselves into ministers of righteousness whose end will be according to their works.

What are they? Satan's ministers. That might seem like an extreme statement to some people, but it's similar to what

Jesus said in John 8, 44. What did he say? Those who opposed his ministry, he said, you are of your father, the devil.

I don't think I would ever come up with that myself. I don't know that I would ever say that, but Jesus did and Paul did.

It's in the Bible. Jesus goes on to say that the devil does not stand in truth because there is no truth in him.

When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources for he is a liar and the father of it.

So who is the father of lies? Yeah, it's the devil. So if there is a minister who is consistently opposing the truth in favor of preaching lies, he is a minister of Satan.

He is doing the work of his father, the devil. You know, the devil can't build anything.

The devil can't build anything. All the devil does is destroy. God builds up, amen?

The devil tears down. Jesus said, I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.

But Satan, he tries, he tries, and he knows that if he attacks the church from the outside, well, that's difficult and you don't get as far, but if Satan can get on the inside and dismantle from within, he is far more effective.

Jude verse four, for certain men have crept in unnoticed who long ago were marked out for this condemnation.

Acts chapter 20, verse 30, Paul says, from among yourselves, men will rise up speaking perverse things.

So false teachers are unbelievers. They get into churches, they attract the following.

Once they have an audience, they begin to corrupt the faith. This chips away at the unity of the church.

They are wolves in sheep's clothing. Sometimes the sheep outfit comes off and they're just a wolf, but they devour the flock.

How? By teaching false doctrine. By teaching lies.

It's sort of like the Trojan horse approach. Dismantle, divide, and conquer from within.

They follow their master's playbook because this is what Satan did.

You realize Satan was once a holy angel in heaven? You knew that. Satan was once an angel,

Lucifer, in God's heavenly court. But due to his pride, he fell and he led a rebellion and he took one third of the angels with him.

Satan is a descriptive term, which means adversary. Satan's personal name, however, we believe is

Lucifer, which means light bearer. When he was created, he was indeed an angel of light.

And he continues to present himself that way. Satan comes not as a vile being with horns and a tail.

Satan can come with a smile, offering to show you a different way, a better way.

But its end is destruction. So Jesus said, again,

I will build my church. The devil says, I'll destroy it. I know it always made me wonder, does the devil know that he can't win?

I think he knows. I think he knows that he's not gonna win, but he's gonna do his best.

He's doing a good job, actually, isn't he? So there are true churches and there are false churches.

Then there are true churches that go bad and become false churches.

Paul, though, as long as he was alive, he said, not on my watch, not the Corinthians.

You're not taking them. Why? Because Paul loved the Corinthians. And you know, your shepherd loves you.

If you attend a church, your shepherd loves you. If you attend a Bible -believing church.

Paul was not about to hand the church over to false teachers. So he wants every church member in Corinth to know exactly what is at stake.

And this same struggle is happening today. So hopefully this message helps you to understand what's happening.

These are perilous times that we are living in. So let's go back to John 3, where we started, and we'll end there.

It's only 7 .28. You might almost get out in an hour and a half. Almost, almost.

So just to return to this main point, how love is being overemphasized to the expense of everything else, because the reason we're gathered here is to glorify the name of Christ.

And to glorify the name of Christ, we need to speak the truth about Christ. He is the son of God, born of a virgin.

Who died on the cross for our sin. He rose bodily the third day.

He ascended into heaven, where he is seated at the right hand of God. He is coming again to judge the living and the dead.

That's the true message. Yes, God is a God of love. Jesus loves you.

Jesus loves the little children. We'll talk to the little children again. Hey, kids. Hey, kids, you know

Jesus loves you? Jesus loves you. You know what else Jesus wants? He wants you to obey him.

Just like kids need to obey your mom and dad. That's sort of how you show love to God, because God has put your parents in charge.

So show love to God by listening to mom and dad. But we all, as adults, we need to listen to our father.

So God is love. I talked about this statement that someone made last week.

God is love, which is biblical, but then someone said, God is love, period.

Well, I think it's God is love, comma. God is more than just love.

God is holy. That's God's primary attribute. Elevated to the third degree,

Isaiah chapter six. God is holy, holy, holy. You know the hymn, holy, holy, holy.

God is holy. God is righteous. Hebrews chapter one, verse nine says that Jesus hates sin.

Jesus hates sin. Look at John chapter three, verse 16.

For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whoever believes in him should not perish, but has everlasting life.

For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved.

He who believes in him is not condemned, but he who does not believe is condemned already because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten son of God.

Let's close in prayer. Heavenly father, I just pray that if there's anyone here tonight who has never trusted in Christ as their

Lord and savior, whatever it is that's holding them back, maybe it's a love for sin.

Lord, I pray that you would break down that barrier and that tonight would be the night they bow their heart and say,

Jesus, I know you died for my sin. I know you rose again for my justification.

Please save me. And Lord, we know if that prayer is offered in sincerity, you will come in and you will save that soul and give them the gift of eternal life.