The Greatest THREAT to the CHURCH?! | Pastor Reacts

The greatest threat to the church is not those who are outside of the church, but those who are in the church, but against Christ.

Are there false teachers, uh, even today floating around churches seeking to lead astray the flock of God? Absolutely. I just don't think that's the biggest threat.

God has given three offices, I believe, to the church. Evangelist, pastor, and teacher. Wherever you see a weak church, you see these weak men.

Ooh, let that one sit for a second. This is really good. And it actually tracks along my answer. What is the greatest threat to the church today? I'm sure you have some thoughts, as do I. But wait a second.

Some pastors that are popular in the YouTube space have given their thoughts. So why don't we do this? Why don't we take a look at the top three most popular videos by pastors on this particular subject and see if our opinions match up to theirs, shall we?

Now, which pastors are the most popular? That's a great question. Let's find out together. But first, if you're new here, welcome to Wise Disciple. My name is Nate, and I'm helping you become the effective Christian that Jesus wants you to be.

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The greatest threat to the church is not those who are outside of the church, but those who are in the church, but against Christ. There are the apostates, and ultimately they're dangerous because they creep inside.

In your neighborhood, I'm assuming when you go to bed tonight, somewhere nearby, there will be a criminal. There's no problem unless they break into your house. Once the criminal has broken into your house, now it is a crisis.

These are people who break into God's house, the church. They love to be in leadership. They love to be noticed. They love to be in authority. But hear me in this. They're very dangerous. Those are the greatest deceivers.

They like to get into the church and into ministries and into leadership. And what they ultimately want to do, they want to teach counterfeit false doctrines. These are people who pretend to be on team Jesus, but they're on team Satan.

The greatest threat to the

Um, okay. This is the number three most popular video of a pastor answering the question, what is the greatest threat to the church today? And this is Mark Driscoll of, shoot, I forget the church in Arizona now.

I drove right by it too. The, uh, golly, I was just in Scottsdale. Uh, was it last year? Anyway, Trinity Church. Thank you.

And, uh, anyway,.

And so Driscoll's answer is apostates. Apostates are the greatest threat to the church today. People, in other words, people who pretend to be Christian, they pretend to be leaders of the church, but they are not Christians at all.

And they will bring down the church from the inside. Now it's very interesting to me. Um, I'm trying to find a charitable way to say this. I get the sense that, uh, whatever a pastor's answer is to this question, it's somehow a reflection of them to a certain degree, by the way, in a bit, I'm going to give you my answer to this question.

And maybe that's just a reflection on me. I don't know. Um, but I, I, I think there's something about that. That's correct. You know, that a pastor's answer to this question is somehow going to tell us a little bit about the pastor.

I don't know if I'm right. Okay. None of my degrees are in psychology. So let me go ahead and acknowledge that. Take what I say here with a grain of salt. I just, I can't help, but to remember Driscoll's story, right?

Here's a guy who he gets confronted by his previous staff and the elders, uh, over allegations of things, right? Plagiarism, abusive behavior, bullying. His church planting network also confronts him, I think.

And as far as I remember, he denies the charges. And so he resigns. Years later, he's back and he's leading another church. And his answer to the biggest threat to the church are those folks who pretend to be Christian, particularly in positions of leadership, but actually are not.

And we'll actually bring the church down from the inside. Now I could, I, I could be way off. That is a, I'll acknowledge that. It's a very jaundiced view of Driscoll. Here's a charitable, more agreeable take on his position.

Look at this, Acts chapter 20, verse 28 says, pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers to care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood.

I know that after my departure, now here it is, fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock. And from among your own selves will arise men speaking twisted things to draw away the disciples after them.

So this is Paul speaking to the Ephesians. Apparently there has always been this threat of false teachers coming into the flock of God and sort of unraveling the church from the inside out with lies. Okay, Paul says the same thing this way in second Timothy, verse three, this is chapter four, verse three.

For the time is coming when people will not endorse sound teaching, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions. And we'll turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths, all right?

Now you'll notice something in the New Testament, whether it's here or it's in Acts chapter 20, or even in first John, right? Paul provides a solution for these kinds of folks who would come in like, you know, wolves, right?

And lead the flock astray. And I'll show you all of that in a moment. But I point this out now to say, I don't think false teachers are the greatest threat to the church. Are they a huge threat? Absolutely.

Are there false teachers even today floating around churches seeking to lead astray the flock of God? Absolutely. I just don't think that's the biggest threat. Again, I could be wrong. Driscoll could be right.

You know, I'll give you more of my thoughts on this in just a moment.

Pastor John, my question for you today is what are some of the greatest dangers that you see facing the church of Jesus Christ today?

Maybe an analogy to start that. If you ask me what is the greatest danger, physical danger in a human body, I would say a deficient immune system, right? Because then you could die of a hundred diseases.

If the immune system can't fight off illness, there's a hundred ways to die. So the greatest danger in a human body is the collapse of the immune system. That's what fights off all the diseases.

So this is the number two most popular answer to the question, what is the greatest threat to the church today? And this is John MacArthur being interviewed by a pastor here in Nashville, actually. That's cool.

Small world, right? It sounds like MacArthur's answer is my answer, but let me see where he goes with this.

And I would say in the church, it's the same thing. It's a deficient immune system. It's the inability to discern truth from error. It's not recognizing deception. It's being led astray. It may be psychology.

It may be pragmatism. It may be sentimentalism. It may be liberalism. It may be some weird view of the atonement or some aberrant view of Jesus. Any kind of thing that is not true, right, has potential to do severe damage to the church because the church is the pillar and ground of the truth, which means that the leadership of the church...

So what he's referring to is when the apostle Paul said this, take a look. First Timothy 3 .15, if I delay, you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, a pillar and buttress of the truth.

Yes and amen, praise God, hallelujah. So MacArthur, it sounds like, wants to say that lacking spiritual discernment is the greatest threat to the church today. That actually was not my answer, by the way, but we'll let him finish his thought.

The church has to be discerning. They have to have a fully functioning immune system that fights off every heresy. I mean, there's a hundred heresies that can kill a church. There's a hundred wrong things that kill a church.

Paul talks about them. He calls them every lofty idea raised up against the knowledge of God. Any ungodly idea, Paul says in 2 Corinthians 10, is like a fortress that has to be smashed. It's a fortress and people are captive to those ideological fortresses.

And the word for fortress in the Greek is the same word for tomb. Those fortresses become their tombs. They're entombed in aberrant ideology. So Satan is a liar, right? His ministers are deceivers. Satan operates in false religion 99 of the time.

He's not running brothels. He's running religions. That's his business. So it's the inability to discern because the people who are in leadership don't possess that discernment that comes from rightly dividing the word of truth.

Yeah.

Well, okay. Hold on now, hold on. So he's kind of touching on my answer now.

Okay.

Stick with me and I'll tell you what my answer is at the end. Okay. For now, we're kind of back to the issue of leaders again, aren't we? So it seems like this is a common problem and it's this pattern that's emerging here.

I'll tell you this. There is a deep biblical concept that establishes God's high expectations for those who lead his people. Look at this. I've got my trusty Logos Bible software app here. Some of you have heard me talk about Logos and you still haven't tried it, but take a look at some of the free features, you know, and see if it's a good fit.

There's a free version of the app, you know. There's also a free book that they give away every month that you can download. No questions asked. So avail yourself of that. I think it's good. For more on this, go to logos .com forward slash wise disciple.

Ezekiel chapter 34 verse one says this. The word of the Lord came to me, son of man, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel, the leaders. Prophesy and say to them, even to the shepherds, thus says the Lord God, ah, shepherds of Israel, who have been feeding yourselves.

Should not shepherds feed the sheep? You eat the fat, you clothe yourselves with the wool, you slaughter the fat ones, but you do not feed the sheep. The weak you have not strengthened, the sick you have not healed, the injured you have not bound up, the strayed you have not brought back, the lost you have not sought.

And with force and harshness, you have ruled them. So they were scattered because there was no shepherd and they became food for all the wild beasts. My sheep, God's sheep were scattered. They wandered over all the mountains and on every high hill.

My sheep were scattered over all the face of the earth with none to search or seek for them. The Lord goes on to say this. Here's what it says in verse 10. Thus says the Lord God, behold, I'm against the shepherds and I will require my sheep at their hand and put a stop to their feeding the sheep.

No longer shall the shepherds feed themselves. I will rescue my sheep from their mouths that they may not be food for them. So in other words, God's judgment is coming to the shepherds. They will be evaluated and found wanting in the eyes of God.

As a matter of fact, the Lord goes on to say that he will become the shepherd of his own sheep in verse 15, look at this. I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep. I myself will make them lie down declares the Lord.

I will seek the lost. I will bring back the strayed. Now you fast forward to Jesus in John chapter 10 and this is what he meant when he said this. Verse 11, I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.

Jesus goes on to differentiate himself between the good shepherd and the hired hand. Verse 12, who guess what? Is only in it for himself. Who runs away at the first sign of trouble and leaves the sheep behind to be scattered.

This is the same imagery as an Ezekiel chapter 34 but it's not just Ezekiel. I mean, this concept runs throughout the entire Bible. That's why James says that the teachers will be judged with greater strictness.

It's because God has a high expectation for those who would lead his people. Why? Because bad leaders will do all kinds of damage to his sheep and we're seeing that today, are we not?

Pastor John, let's say hypothetically I'm a pastor and I wanna know how can I boost then and how can I fortify my church's immune system to err? How can I become more discerning? What would be your advice?

Yeah and again, it goes back to that verse where Paul says don't be children anymore tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine. If you have a child on the floor, the child doesn't know the difference between a cracker on the floor and a safety pin.

It's all going in the mouth and you don't want, you're so vulnerable when you are a child. So how do you become mature? Through the scriptures, through the word. It's 1 John where the writer says, I write unto you young men because you are strong because you know the word.

So the only way that you can raise a congregation that has discernment is to teach them the word of God and I wanna say this.

So I suppose his answer is my answer. So MacArthur is just articulating it in a different way. You know, I'll let him finish and then I'll circle back around.

It's not enough to stand up and tell them what the Bible says. You have to let the Bible speak. If you explain the scripture, God speaks. If you say to someone, this is what the Bible says, they have to believe you.

Let them believe the scripture.

And then there will be a great degree of unity and conviction on what is true and then a greater degree of discernment on what is even subtly false and full of error.

And it's always the subtle lies that get you because they get like a Trojan horse. You know, they get in and then they send out their troops everywhere. Things begin to disintegrate. So it's the ability to discern the subtle deceptions and lies.

Yeah, this is good. This is really good. And it actually tracks along my answer. So to the question of what is the greatest threat to the church today? My answer is biblical illiteracy. Take a look at this.

So this is the Apostle Paul. This is a letter that he wrote to the church in Galatia. All right, this is Galatians chapter one. The churches were suffering from some very specific issues. One of them was false teaching, which I mean, let's face it, was becoming a thing across a lot of the churches for various reasons.

But watch how Paul addresses this issue and then presents the specific solution. Look at this, verse six. I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who has called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel.

Not that there is another one, but that there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. But even if we, or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one that we preach to you, let him be accursed.

As we've said before. So now I say again, if anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed. Now, Paul acknowledges there's trouble, acknowledges there's false teachers, but he presupposes something here.

So if you're wondering, you know, how can we warn these folks to watch out for false gospels, right? Well, it's because he's presupposing that they know the true message of God, that they know the true gospel or else how could they identify false gospels, right?

This is what I mean by biblical illiteracy. The problem in my mind is not that there are false teachers in the church. I think we should just assume that false teaching will always be a thing that the devil tries to wield against God's people.

The problem is that when false teachers or when false teaching takes place,.

Nobody knows it.

Nobody catches it. That's biblical illiteracy, ladies and gentlemen. And that to me is the greatest threat to the church, whether today, yesterday, or sometime in the future. A church of God that does not know his word is always going to be the biggest threat.

When the church's favorite book is barely opened and hardly read, it will lead to all kinds of trouble, which we're witnessing today.

Are we not?

Are you with me or have I lost you? Let me know what you think is the greatest threat to the church today. I'm actually, I'm curious to get your thoughts. All right, two down. Now here is the most popular video by a pastor talking about the greatest threat to the church.

Take a look at this.

But what do you think the greatest threat is to the church in our generation? It's pastors. Honestly, the pastors. Anywhere God has given three offices, I believe, to the church, evangelist, pastor, and teacher.

Wherever you see a weak church, you see these weak men. Either they're non-existent, they're unbiblical, or they're unconverted. And all this talk about the judgment on our country because of its immoralities and everything else, never forget judgment always begins with the household of God.

And...

Let that one sit for a second. Here's the biblical reference for that. 1 Peter 4, verse 17, for it is time for judgment to begin at the household of God. And if it begins with us, what will be the outcome for those who do not obey the gospel of God?

In other words, judgment accomplishes two things. It refines the believer, but it absolutely destroys the unbeliever. This is probably a video for another time. You can also connect this to Malachi chapter three as well.

God's promise is, in the day of his coming, he will first refine his people and then bring final judgment against all evildoers. This is what Peter was thinking of. Malachi was what Peter, it was in his mind when he says what he says in 1 Peter 4.

So if you're thinking about God's judgment against our nation or the West, let's say, you should look first to the churches. If the church is supposed to be a pillar and a buttress of the truth, right?

Well, when the church crumbles, you see where this is going? Anyway, I don't know. Let me know if you want to talk about that in a future video. But Washer is absolutely correct here. Good for him.

I am astounded at the lack of the fear of the Lord and the lack of biblical knowledge among those who would call themselves the ministers of Christ. And, um,.

Well, let's not go too fast there, right? There's biblical illiteracy again, right? He he just said that he's astounded by the lack of biblical knowledge. That's that's it, right?

I mean, the atrocities that have happened in America and evangelicalism, just in the pulpit itself, the tomfoolery, the lack of reverence. If you have a church that's not a praying church, it's because you have non praying elders.

The church is not biblical. It's because you have non biblical elders. It always goes back to. So when I look at the nation, I'm not blaming some party or professors or this or that. I'm looking at myself as a minister of Christ.

And that's a very solemn. That's why someone shouldn't enter into the ministry very lightly. And, you know, we could say all kinds of other things, but it all does come back to that. We could say liberalism, which is true.

We could say even a greater, more dangerous thing. That's a secret. Hidden liberalism is when men affirm that the Bible is inerrant, but their whole ministry is nothing but pragmatism. All you young men need to understand something.

All this talk about reformation in the last 15 years, the reformers didn't want to be reformers. They just want to be biblical. Number one. Number two, you're not reformed.

And what was the concern of a lot of the reformers? That God's word was not being made available to all, right? That there was an unnecessary divide between church leaders and the rest of the church when it comes to knowing and wrestling with God's word.

The reformers wanted God's word to truly hit the heart of each person as they studied it for themselves. And that's the whole point. To do this very thing is to be not only biblically literate, but to meet the God of the word in a special way and to be transformed by his word.

Amen.

Simply because you've adopted an academic view of some sort of sovereign grace, soteriology. You're following in the spirit of the reformers because you're trying to take every aspect of your thought, your doctrine, your disposition, your life, your family, your church and submitting it to what is written.

And so those are some of the things.

Amen.

So good. So good. Washer is a powerful speaker. I'm not sure if you've seen him speak before or preach. You should check it out. So to recap, it seems like Driscoll says, apostates and false teachers are the biggest threat.

MacArthur says that lacking spiritual discernment is the biggest threat. And now Washer says, it's a church's leaders, the pastors who are the biggest threat. And of course, I've given you my answer. It's biblical literacy.

I think this explains the trouble that we're seeing across churches today, whether it's the problems of at the pulpit, right? People at the pulpit that Washer's talking about, or even like a lack of,.

I don't know,.

Christ likeness and developed fruits of the spirit, or even spiritual discernment, actually. Spiritual discernment comes down to, amongst other things, your knowledge of the scripture. Did you know that?

Take a look at this. Hebrews 5 verse 11 says, about this we have much to say, and it is hard to explain since you've become dull of hearing. For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God.

What are the oracles of God?

It's God's word.

You need milk, not solid food. For everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness. What is the word of righteousness? It's God's word, since he is a child. But solid food is for the mature.

So here it is. For those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil. So that's interesting. Look at what's being taught right here in Hebrews. Your discernment is something that can be trained.

Did you know that? And the way that you train it, your discernment, is by practicing the art of distinguishing between good and evil. Well, how do we know what is good, right? And what is evil? We go to God.

We let God define these things.

Amen.

And that requires what? Going to his word. That's why if you look right here, verse 12 and 13, those verses lead up to verse 14. But what is verse 12 and 13 about?

God's word,.

The oracles of God, the solid food, the word of righteousness, right? You practice these things. You practice distinguishing good from evil within the context of knowing God's word, right? The food is the word.

Which, by the way, this is, you know, something to chew on, on the way out the door.

Anyway.

All right. Well, now it's your turn. Okay. Starting to digress there. What is the biggest threat to your church, to the church, in your opinion? Do you agree with Driscoll? Do you agree with MacArthur?

Do you agree with Washer or myself? Or do you have your own answer? Let me know in the comments below. I'm curious. Let's keep the discussion going there. As always, if you made it this far, you got to come on down to the Patreon.

It's continuing to grow. You can get into the Gospel of Matthew, we're doing a Bible study right now, a deep dive into the scripture. A lot of people are benefiting from that. You can jump into live streams, Zoom hangouts.

You can meet up with me one-on-one. Anyway, go check it out. The link for the Patreon is below. I will return soon with more videos, but in the meantime, I'll say bye for now.