WWUTT 1706 No Other Christ (2 Corinthians 11:4)

The Clarity of Scripture and the Simplicity of Devotion to Christ

There are people who proclaim another Jesus other than the Jesus of the Bible. There are people that proclaim another gospel that is not the gospel of Jesus Christ. These things do not save. The scriptures are clear when we understand the text.

Many of the Bible stories and verses we think we know, we don't. When we understand the text is committed to teaching sound doctrine and rebuking those who contradict it. Visit our website at www .utt .com.

Here once again is Pastor Gabe.

Thank you, Becky. Well, as we pick up our study of 2 Corinthians, we're back in chapter 11, which we just started Wednesday of last week. We're going to pick up where we left off. I'm going to begin by reading verses 1 through 15 out of the Legacy Standard Bible.

This is the word of the Lord through the Apostle Paul writing to the church in Corinth. I wish that you would bear with me in a little foolishness, but indeed you are bearing with me. For I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy.

For I betrothed you to one husband, so that I might present you as a pure virgin to Christ. But I fear that, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, your minds will be corrupted from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ.

For if one comes and preaches another Jesus, whom we did not preach, or you receive a different spirit which you did not receive, or a different gospel which you did not accept, you bear this beautifully.

For I consider myself in no way inferior to the most eminent apostles. But even if I am unskilled in word, yet I am not so in knowledge. In fact, in every way we have made this evident to you in all things.

Or did I commit a sin in humbling myself so that you might be exalted because I proclaimed the gospel of God to you without charge? I robbed other churches by taking wages from them to minister to you.

And when I was present with you and was in need, I was not a burden to anyone. For when the brothers came from Macedonia, they fully supplied my need, and in everything I kept and will keep myself from being a burden to you.

As the truth of Christ is in me, this boasting of mine will not be stopped in the regions of Achaia. Why? Because I do not love you? God knows I do. But what I am saying I will continue to do so that I may cut off opportunity from those who desire an opportunity to be found just as we are in the matter about which they are boasting.

For such men are false apostles, deceitful workers, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ. And no wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. Therefore, it is not surprising if his ministers also disguise themselves as ministers of righteousness, whose end will be according to their deeds.

So last week when we started this section, we only got as far as the first three verses. Paul opens the chapter by saying, bear with me in a little foolishness. Indeed, you are bearing with me. They've made it this far in the letter.

But Paul is going to boast about himself in this particular chapter. And doing so, that he may win the Corinthians back from the false teachers that they've been following. Those false teachers who've been boasting in themselves.

Fine, if that's what it is that is appealing to you. When a teacher boasts about himself, well, let me boast about myself. And of course, the boasting that he's going to do is going to be with regards to how he sacrificed himself for the sake of the Corinthians, that they may hear the gospel.

Paul did everything that he did for their benefit, whereas these false teachers are doing everything that they do for their own benefit. So Paul says, I fear that as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, your minds are being corrupted from the simplicity and the purity of devotion to Christ.

That's verse three. That was where we finished up last week. My friends, we are not at liberty to play fast and loose with the text. We cannot twist the scriptures. We cannot interpret them to mean whatever we want them to mean.

There is a word that is used, or at least you may have heard this word used, to describe the clarity of scripture. We can understand what the Holy Spirit means to communicate through the prophet or apostle that wrote the text that we're reading.

The word that describes that is perspicuity. It just basically means the scriptures are clear. They're not obscure. Now, there are some passages that are more difficult to interpret. And I think more specifically about like apocalyptic passages or prophetic passages.

But when it comes to clear instruction, especially where the law of God is concerned or the commands of Christ, either from him in the gospels or through his apostles, when it comes to those things, those instructions, they're clear.

We don't have to be guessing. We don't have to try and interpret it the way that we think it's supposed to be applied. It's evident what God means to communicate through his prophets and apostles. Last week at the Southern Baptist Convention, surely you heard the Southern Baptist Convention was last week in Anaheim, California.

There were a number of issues that were left very unclear, as though we can't really know what the Bible says about those things. Abortion was one of them. But I think in particular of the issue of who's qualified to be a pastor.

Boy, there was a lot of discussion about whether or not a woman can be a pastor. The Bible's clear on this. We've talked about it many times on this podcast, my wife and I, especially on our Friday Q &A's.

1 Timothy 2, 11 and 12. I do not permit a woman to teach or have authority over a man, but rather she must remain quiet. A woman cannot be a pastor. You continue on the context into chapter 3, verse 7.

The qualifications for an overseer, pastor or elder in a church is very clearly limited to men, qualified men, according to what the scripture says. They must be tested by the scriptures. And then if found to meet those qualifications, then let him serve as an elder or as a pastor.

He desires an honorable thing, as it says in 1 Timothy 3, 1. But scripture is clear, the perspicuity of scripture. It's clear that women cannot be pastors. But the Southern Baptist Convention seems to be rather unclear on that subject.

People just have different opinions about this. It was said from the podium that some believe women are gifted to be pastors. No, the Holy Spirit is never going to contradict his word. He does not gift a woman to hold that position that she's not permitted by scripture to hold.

Now, she can be a very gifted teacher, but she's not gifted to be a pastor. She can be gifted to teach other women as qualified by Titus 2 or to teach her own children. She's not the head of her household, nor can she be an overseer in the church.

That is a responsibility that God has given to qualified men to do, not for women to do. But in the Southern Baptist Convention, people apparently are suddenly confused about all that, even though 22 years ago, the statement of faith that was drafted by the Southern Baptist Convention and accepted by the messengers clarifies and plainly states that the office of pastor is limited only to men.

Suddenly, we seem to be a little confused about that. Well, maybe women can be pastors, too, as long as they're not the senior pastor. No, not OK. There are a lot of people that are questioning now God's wisdom and what he has said about who is qualified to be pastor.

And they will say that God's word is not clear on this. Well, when they make that kind of a claim, when they say God's word is not clear on who can be pastor, or they will say that, you know, this was 2000 years ago.

This only applied to what Paul was saying to Timothy about the church there in Ephesus. It doesn't apply to us today. Well, that is a person who is questioning the perspicuity of scripture. If that issue is not clear, then no other issue is clear.

There's no issue in the Bible that's clear. And there are people that are defending the Southern Baptist Convention and saying, no, we're conservative, we're not liberal. But if you're questioning whether the scripture is clear on this issue, which the scripture is clear about, then you really are falling into liberalism.

Because it's liberalism that claims that the scriptures are not clear. And this comes back again to Paul saying that there is a simplicity and a purity of our devotion to Christ. And our devotion to Christ, by the way, means we follow all of what Christ has commanded.

And that's in the Great Commission. Matthew 28, 20, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you and lo that I am with you always to the very end of the age. So we must not only go out with the gospel and baptize, we must also teach all that Christ has commanded.

And 1 Timothy 2, though written by the Apostle Paul to Timothy, is a word that Christ has commanded. What we're reading here in 2 Corinthians 11, though written by the Apostle Paul, is a word that Christ has commanded.

For Paul was carrying the word of Christ. That was the responsibility that an apostle had. These instructions are clear to us. We are not at liberty to interpret them the way that we want to interpret them.

There is a simplicity and a purity to these instructions. We're the ones that complicate them. If you don't understand the Bible, that's not the Bible's fault. That's your fault. As James 1, 5 says, if anyone lacks wisdom, let him ask of God who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given to him.

Paul said in 1 Corinthians 2, verse 14, that the things of God are difficult to understand for the naturally minded man. The naturally minded man can't discern the things of God for they are spiritually discerned.

It is only with the Holy Spirit in our hearts that we can understand scripture and rightly apply it in a way that is honoring to God and grows us in godliness and holiness as we live out the word of Christ.

So we must understand it. We must teach it. We must recognize there's a simplicity to these instructions, and there is a purity to it. Purity, meaning that we're not messing up the text with our own interpretations and cultural ideals, and, you know, we're trying to appease the most number of people and then smashing that onto the text.

We read what the Bible says, what God said through this writer to that group of people and understanding how that applies to us today. Paul says in verse 4, for if one comes and preaches another Jesus whom we did not preach or you receive a different spirit which you did not receive or a different gospel which you did not accept, you bear this beautifully.

That's really sarcastic. That's why I had to have a sarcastic tone there when I delivered the last part of that line. If one comes and preaches another Jesus, you bear this beautifully. Like some of you there at the church in Corinth, you are receptive of false teachers coming in and preaching to you another Christ.

Why? You bear it beautifully. But why? Why are you listening to these false teachers teach another Jesus? As though another Jesus has power to save. He doesn't. Another Jesus cannot save you. Only the true Christ, according to the testimony of the apostles that we have in the New Testament in fulfillment of the Old Testament, only the true Christ can save the Mormon.

Jesus is not the true Christ. That is a false Christ. And anyone who believes in the Mormon Jesus is not saved because the Mormon Jesus cannot save. According to Joseph Smith, the Mormon Jesus is an exalted man.

Now, you might think, well, wait a minute, isn't he? Well, he was God before he was man. But Joseph Smith also proclaims that God the Father is an exalted man. He was a man just like any one of us. It was kind of the gist of his King Follett discourse.

One of the last sermons that he delivered before he died is that God the Father is an exalted man and that each and every one of us can likewise become exalted men if we just follow the instructions that Joseph Smith wrote down in his false gospels.

The Jesus of Mormonism is a different Jesus. He is literally the brother of Satan. In the Mormon faith, Jesus is the brother of Satan. Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother had celestial sex and had all these spiritual offspring.

The firstborn is Jesus and the secondborn was Lucifer or Satan. He is literally Jesus' brother. Friends, that's heresy. Jesus has no beginning and no end. The Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last, meaning there is no one before him.

There is no one coming after him. He is self-existent without beginning and without end. Satan is a created creature. He was made by God. Of course, he rebelled against God and he was cast out of heaven as a result, and he's going to be destroyed in the end.

I'm taking my Sunday school class through 2 Thessalonians right now. The Antichrist will be vanquished by a breath from his mouth. That's how much power Satan has, basically none. Jesus just goes, and he's dead.

That's it. No more Satan. Satan is a creature. Christ is the creator. Satan is not the brother of Jesus. You believe in the Mormon Jesus. You believe in a false Christ who cannot save you. Incidentally, the God, the father in the Mormon faith is named Elohim.

That's supposedly his real name, according to Mormonism. And Elohim came down to Mary and had sex with Mary, and she got pregnant and then gave birth to Jesus. This is according to Mormonism. But because she had sex with an exalted man who is Elohim, then she was still a virgin and did not actually lose her virginity.

Therefore, it could still be said that Christ is virgin born. There's all sorts of wonkiness going on in Mormonism. But all of this just to say the Mormon Jesus is not the real Christ. You believe in the Mormon Christ.

You believe in a false Christ, an Antichrist. It is not the Christ of the Bible. It is most definitely not the Christ that was proclaimed by the apostles as having died and risen again and ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.

You believe in the Mormon Jesus. You believe in another Jesus whom we did not preach, Paul says. Jehovah's Witnesses, same thing. I won't spend as much time on the Jehovah's Witnesses, but they claim that Jesus is the Archangel Michael.

Again, created. He's a creature. Not the creator. According to Jehovah's Witnesses, that's a false Christ. You do not have saved Jehovah's Witnesses. A Jehovah's Witness is not a Christian, not a person who has turned from sin to the Lord Jesus Christ.

They have put their faith and trust in a false Christ and are not saved. So Jehovah's Witnesses must repent from that false religion and turn to the true Christ of the Bible, who is not an angel, who is not Michael.

He is Christ, the self-existent eternal God with no beginning and no end. If one comes and preaches another Jesus whom we did not preach, then they are not saved. The next part, or you receive a different spirit which you did not receive.

Now, there's all sorts of spiritualism in the world, but there's only one Holy Spirit. How do we know what's from the Holy Spirit? It's right here in the Bible. I'm really, really concerned about Sarah Young, who is the author of Jesus Calling, because she claims to write that book.

Now, in case you're not familiar with Jesus Calling, it is first-person devotionals in the voice of Jesus. And she claims that she emptied her mind of all thoughts. She had a pen and paper there, and she just wrote down whatever it was that came to her mind, which she claimed that these were the thoughts of Jesus that were given to her mind, which she wrote down and then became this best-selling devotional book, which she's made millions of dollars off of.

But that is not how Christ communicates with us. He communicates with us through the Bible. So she thinks that she's received something from God, but it's not. It's a different spirit. That's why I'm really concerned about Sarah Young's soul, if she does not repent of this and turn to the true Christ, the true Spirit, which is the Holy Spirit who gave us the Word of God.

That is the Bible. In 1 John 4, 1, it says, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. How do we test the spirits? We test them according to what the Bible says, the Word of God.

So Paul goes on to say, or you receive a different gospel, which you did not accept. Now, in Galatians 1, Paul says there is no other gospel. So if you're receiving a different gospel, you're receiving a false gospel.

Galatians 1, 6, I marvel that you are so quickly deserting him who called you by the grace of Christ for a different gospel, which is really not another, only that there are some who are disturbing you and want to distort the gospel of Christ.

But even if we or an angel from heaven should proclaim to you a gospel contrary to the gospel we have proclaimed to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again, if any man is proclaiming to you a gospel contrary to what you received, let him be accursed.

For am I now seeking the favor of men or of God? If I am striving to please men, I would not be a slave of Christ. Paul says there in Galatians 1. So there is not another gospel. If somebody comes to you claiming that you are saved by grace and works, you also have to do works in order to be a Christian.

Well, then you're not really saved by grace. If we are saved by grace through faith, then it's not our own doing. It is the gift of God. That, by the way, is Ephesians 2 .8. If we're saved by grace through faith, it's not our own doing.

It is the gift of God. If you have to add something to that, oh, you also have to be baptized or you're not really saved. Now you've added works to it and you're not really saved by grace through faith.

Now there is certainly obedience that we must do. But the obedience is evidence that we are saved, that we have been transformed. It's not the obedience that saves us. It is Christ that saves us. And if we've been transformed, we'll do what he says.

And once again, what he says is clear according to the scriptures. We don't have to be in mystery about these things. All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God and are justified by his grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood to be received by faith.

Romans 3, 23 to 25. Romans 6, 23. The wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Jesus saying in John 14, 6, I am the way, the truth, and the life.

No one comes to the Father, but by me. There is no other way that we can be saved. As it says in Acts, no other name under heaven by which a person can be saved, but through Jesus Christ. It is only by faith in the true Christ is proclaimed by the apostles, as we have in the New Testament, as was foretold in the Old Testament.

It is only the Christ of the Bible, only by faith in him that we can be saved. And praise God, the scriptures are clear and we do not have to be in mystery about this. Amen. Let's finish up there. We'll pick up in verse five tomorrow.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you for your spirit that we can understand this word and obey this word and live according to this word. So give us clarity by your spirit that we may understand these things and do them and then share them with others so that they too would turn from their sin to the true Christ of the Bible.

And by faith in him, we are forgiven our sins and have everlasting life. Thank you for your goodness and grace. It is in Jesus name that we pray. Amen.