Thankful For False Teaching?

Welcome to No Compromise Radio Ministry. That is our new intro. I kind of like it. It's growing on me. Giving me growing pains. Do y 'all like it? Thank you. I knew that would be the truth. Anyway, you can write me, Mike at NoCompromiseRadio .com.

You can follow us at Twitter, at NoCoRadio. I did pick up at Duplex Gratia, but I haven't really done much with that account. All that to say, thanks for listening. We've got the Gospel Assurance books.

The devotional is, I think, 80 pages on Amazon. It's got the homage to... Is that what it's called? It's my hat tip to Jerry Bridges style books. We liked him as a theologian. I still like him, even though he's with the Lord.

And the guide is more the gentle and lowly homage. We just take things from people we like and say, okay. It's kind of hard. I don't know how you design books with covers and how do you go about it. I have no idea.

If you want either of those books, or sexual fidelity books in bulk, email me. Mike at NoCompromiseRadio .com because I can get you the books a lot cheaper than Amazon. If you're going to do the one-off or two-off, you are on your own.

I have to tell you a wonderful story. It's kind of a praise story. I forgot a while ago, I mentioned on the radio that I was looking for a stuffed owl. My mother had got it at an estate sale, a stuffed bear head.

We have a stuffed deer head at home. A little raccoon on a stick. We have a rabbit with some horns. What do you call those? Jackalopes or something. A funny one. Just around the house. And we've got a spiral staircase that goes downstairs that we put on the new addition.

The center piece, the center of the spiral staircase doesn't go all the way to the roof, to the ceiling. It's maybe seven foot up and then it doesn't go any higher than that. I thought, there needs to be an owl there.

But I can't find an owl. They're birds of prey. You can't buy them or sell them. I guess they're already around. Somebody can gift you one. That's what I was talking about. I was in California for the conference, the Megapod conference with Heidel Blog, Heidel Cast, Heidel Dog, Heidel Jeep, Heidel Scott.

I was with Pat Abendroth and Mike Grimes of the Pactom and Justin Perdue and John Moffitt from TheoCast. Then we heard Mike Horton and others at the conference. I get home and I had not been back to the church yet.

My men were meeting with me this last Sunday. Men's Discipleship Group for Preaching. They'll be preaching here from the pulpit on April 1st, Saturday for the preach-a-thon. Half hour, then the next guy, half hour, then the next guy, half hour, eight guys.

We got into the study here in my office, a little conference room. There's a box. It said, Fragile. I'm like, what's that? Daniel said to me, Daniel Evangelist, do you want me to help you open that? I said, sure.

We started opening it. I read the note. The note said something like this, Dear Mike or Dear Pastor Mike, High Holy Father, we heard you might need an owl. Thanks for your ministry, Matt and Stacy. I'm like, what?

What is it, like a wooden owl? Is it a glass owl? All the packing peanuts were in there. Trying to figure it all out and everything's all taped up. It's a stuffed barn owl on this little piece of wood with its talons.

I couldn't believe such a gift. I've received gifts in ministry before, but that is right up there. Number one gift probably. If somebody else has given me a gift, it's tied with your gift. Anyway, it's at the perch at home on top of the center of that spiral staircase.

When you walk into the door, the eyes are perfectly placed so it'll look right at you. Then I thought, oh, barn owls. I'm going to just type in barn owl sounds on YouTube. I was thinking, who and we have owls like that around our house.

Well, the barn owls that I've pulled up were screeching. They were vampire-like. They were zombie-like. Man, they're scary things. Maybe I should get some glow-in-the-dark eyes or something and put it on the barn owl when you walk into the room.

You can see that. Matt and Stacy, hopefully I'll see you at the conference this June. I will be at a conference in Medford, Oregon, June, I think 23rd through 25th of 2023 with my friend Kofi. He's invited me to come.

That should be a time where I can meet Matt and Stacy, hopefully. By the way, since if you ask for things on No Compromise Radio, you get them. I've always wanted a new Jeep Wrangler. I did drive a Jeep Wrangler when I rented a car in California and I got a little upgrade.

Man, that was nice. That was some fun driving. So that's really what I've always wanted. I've had my heart set on not just owls. I've got the owl. Now I'm on to the next thing. It's Jeep Wrangler. Lastly, we have a Bible conference here at Bethlehem Bible Church this year, 2023, March 24th through 26th.

That's Friday night, Saturday morning, and then Sunday, Lord's Day. Steve Meister will be here, and if you know Steve, then I don't have to tell you that he's a pastor at Emmanuel Baptist Church in Sacramento.

I've done a couple conferences there. Steve's an excellent writer, a great theologian, and he's going to talk about the doctrine of God, attributes of God, perfections of God, who God is, and it's entitled The Fount of All Joy.

I don't know if it'll be live-streamed or not, but really a non-technical, if you want me to say practical, understanding of the nature of God so that you might respond with adoration, joy, hope, a desire to live a holy life, etc.

Registration details will be coming soon. That's March 24th, 25th, and then Lord's Day here 26th this year. Steve Meister, and the title of the conference is The Fount of All Joy. Alright, that's it for No Compromise Radio for the intro.

I'm sorry that was kind of longer than normal. I think I'm going to have to somehow get to some other kind of, you know, what are we going to do here? I've got to transition somewhere. How do I transition?

No, somehow that doesn't work either. That's a bad transition. I probably have other options for transitions, but maybe not as good. Do you remember watching Mission Impossible when you were a kid? Alright, so much for this rambling.

False Teaching as a Providential Occasion for Clarity in Colossians

Alright, here's the technical part of the show. Here's the actual part of the show, the theological part of the show. The rest is just musings. Tell your friends just fast forward to, you know, minute eight.

Are you thankful for false teaching? I mean, all you have to do is go on social media, or regular media, and you will see false teaching galore. You will see false teaching, neon lights, PowerPoint presentations, just oozing out false teaching.

You can listen to Andy Stanley give false teaching. You can listen to Joe Osteen give false teaching, and everywhere in between. Are you ever thankful for that false teaching? And you're like, of course I'm not thankful.

I want the Lord to just smash all that. Alright, well today on the show there's a certain way that I think you can be thankful for false teaching. Here's how. Did you know many of the books of the New Testament, including the one I'm going to talk about today, came out of and were produced because of there was false teaching and it needed to be addressed by the human author, in this particular case, Paul.

Just imagine false teaching, wrong things said about Jesus, created being, not really as great as angels, maybe one of many ways. There's all kinds of false teaching about Jesus that goes around. But it is in the kiln of, it's in the fire of this false teaching that you see the Spirit of God inspire men.

I don't mean like I'm inspired to write a song, but inspire, like give new revelation from or to, through, and to us we receive from. The Lord Jesus Christ extolled and we are told wonderful things, great Christological truths, because that is needed to counteract the false teaching.

So today on No Compromise Radio I want to talk about the book of Colossians, the book of Colossians. And I really think, and again, this is pure speculation because what is done is done, but it was because of the false teaching that this church was swayed by, potentially swayed by, heard about, that this letter is written by Paul in jail and he sends it to the church at Colossae by the hands of Epaphras.

And so you've got false teaching. What do you do about false teaching? You tell people the truth. And we have this great Christological section in chapter 1, verse 15 and following that some people think it's a hymn.

It's so wonderful. It's this prose. In my English Bible, it doesn't really give an indentation like it would be a different type of genre, genre. But in my Greek New Testament, my NA 27, blue one, I'm never going to get the 28.

I'm old school. Then it's indented a little bit so you kind of get this hymn, hymnody, poem type of flavor. So today on No Compromise Radio, I am thankful in a particular manner only, not in every case.

I mean, I want false teaching all stamped out. But at least false teaching does require a response. And it requires fine-tuned responses, precise responses. And if you want to think even big picture outside the Bible, you can look at creeds and confessions and what prompted those.

Usually it was in response to some false teaching, right? If you look at the Athanasius Creed, I'm not saying Athanasius wrote it, but he would agree with it. Certainly written after he was long gone.

But Arianism comes up, and Arianism slash Jehovah's Witnesses, slash Jesus as a created being, slash Jesus as the eternal Son, as the eternal God, that's espoused and proclaimed and preached, there needs to be a response.

And so you see the creeds and the confessions as a response to false teaching, precisely elucidating truths that we need to know about. And so today, I think I've said that before, we're going to look at Colossians.

Christ as Supreme and Sufficient in Colossians

Now if I just went big picture for Colossians, and Galatians, and Gospelians, if I did big picture on Colossians, and I ask you what it's about, well, I guess with every book in the Bible you could say Jesus, right?

The Christ. Now here it's Jesus is supreme, Jesus is sufficient, that is to say Jesus is all you need, and you therefore don't need all kinds of disciplines, rules, workout plans spiritually, everything you need is found in Christ.

It's not the rituals, it's not denying yourself things, and asceticism, it's not keeping certain days, and feasts, and this, and that. Nothing wrong with feasts in the Old Testament, but they were pointing to someone and that someone is here, and therefore we don't have to go back to these shadows, or even false things.

I actually am using my cough button, I used to never use that on NoCoRadio, but now, once in a while I have to use a cough button, and I just did, and you probably didn't even know it, did you? Alright.

S. Lewis Johnson, I'm working on a commentary, I hope it's going to be out in the next six months, of his, Colossians commentary, that is, and Johnson was talking about how the city, Colossae, used to be, it was a pretty big deal, a lot's going on there, and then as time went on, and by the time Paul writes to them, I don't think Paul ever went there, but Paul writes to them, he, Paul, understands that it's kind of a fading city, and a declining city, but Johnson calls it, perhaps the most contemporary book in the New Testament, Library.

Fascinating. Little city, little goings on, little church, one of the most important books in the Bible. Our friend Chuck Swindoll said, your view of Jesus Christ will impact every area of your life. Many today want only practical instruction and helps for living, eschewing esoteric topics such as doctrine and theology, because they seem to be out of touch with their day-to-day reality.

Paul's view was different. He saw that the Christological problems in the Colossian church had practical importance as well. That's right. And if you think to yourself, Jesus died, we died, right? And we need to keep saying no to sin, dying to sin, mortification.

Jesus is alive, Jesus has been raised, we are alive in Christ, we are raised in Christ, we ought to respond with not just mortification, dying to sin, but vivification, or vivification, living unto righteousness.

This book talks about Jesus as Lord, Jesus as King. And I think probably most of you have been influenced by evangelicalism broadly, and many times those in that broad evangelical camp say, Jesus is good, Jesus is wonderful, Jesus is supreme, but you're going to need something else.

You're going to need this inside knowledge, the inside scoop, the inside doctrine, the inside special experience, the inside slain in the Spirit, the inside speaking in tongues, something else. I have an experience, therefore you need to have the experience, and then you can have the fullness of the Lord Jesus.

And you're going to see in this book, the book of Colossians, that's not true. Since Jesus is supreme, since Jesus is sufficient, you don't need anything else. Charles Wesley, can you ever quote an Arminian?

Of course, he's a Calvinist now. Listen to the song, Jesus, lover of my soul. Other refuge have I none, hangs my helpless soul on thee. Leave, ah, leave me not alone, still support and comfort me. All my trust on thee is stayed, all my help from thee I bring.

Cover my defenseless head with the shadow of thy wing. Plenteous grace with thee is found, grace to cover all my sin. Let the healing streams abound, make and keep me pure within. Thou of life the fountain art, freely let me take of thee.

Spring thou up within my heart, rise to all eternity. And that's really what Paul is trying to get you to do. He is going to extol the Lord Jesus Christ in the book of Colossians, and he wants you to do the same thing.

And Paul and Timothy, I don't think they're co-authors, as it were, I think it's Paul's writing, and Timothy's probably the secretary, and Paul is writing books when he's in prison. Roman prisonment is most likely where he was, and can you imagine, that's where he writes that Jesus is Lord, from the Roman prison.

In this book, we learn about Jesus as the Son of God, the Redeemer, the Image of God, the Lord of Creation, the Head of the Church, the Reconciler. All the fullness of the Godhead dwells in Him in bodily form.

He's supreme authority over all. He's the essence of the mystery of God. He conquers evil. He redeems sinners. He reconciles everything. He's enthroned at the right hand of God. He's the hope of glory.

He's preeminent over all creation. He's the Head of the Church. He is the God-Man. Fulfilled all the Jewish prophecies, Jesus is the One. And then in Him, you not only stand justified, but you are sanctified initially, you're being sanctified progressively, and one day you'll ultimately be sanctified, and we call that glorification.

Most likely, these dear folks had questions, and the sense we get was Jesus isn't enough, and you need Jesus plus other stuff. And you know what? That is even going around today where it's not necessarily false teachers who are Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, but even in Evangelicalism, left to ourselves, our own false teacher of our heart can say, you know what?

Yes, Jesus is important, but I need to have my sanctification adequate enough to make sure my standing is secure. The age-old problem of thinking we stand before God based on our sanctification. And that's not good.

Christ plus stuff, Christ minus stuff. No. And in the sovereignty of God, when this church needs help and other churches need help, by the sovereign hand of God, Paul's in jail. But he writes this, and he gives Epaphras the letter, and he has one thing to say in this letter.

And that's, I mean, the main thing he has to say is Jesus is supreme. It's a great little letter, even how it starts. Sometimes I think as Evangelical Christians, we forget about the intro and don't really let it settle in.

Here's an example. Paul, this is Colossians 1, 1, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God. He's not self-made. He's not, he didn't send himself. An auto apostle sending himself. No, he's an apostle.

That means sent one by Jesus Christ by the will of God. And Timothy, our brother, to the saints and faithful brothers in Christ at Colossae. Therefore they're at Colossae, they're in Colossae, but they're also in Christ.

And there's two identities given here. And then he gives the Greek greeting, grace to you, and the Hebrew greeting, peace from God our Father. Interesting. You say to yourself, what do you mean, grace to you and peace?

You know, that's fine. That's how we talk. It's no big deal. Grace? Grace? Peace? Which one should come first? What if you're Jewish and you want peace to come first? What if you're Greek and you want grace to come first?

Well, both of those are dumb statements that I just made. If you think of bending, stooping down, kneeling down, those are hard things for me to do. I don't like doing them early in the morning if we're going to travel and I need suitcases.

Putting the car that are heavy, you know, 20 kilograms, 50 pounds. I like to do it at night where I'm kind of warmed up a little bit. If you get stooping down, bending down, you're going to get the idea of grace.

That's definitely got the idea, mental picture, where God not because we deserve anything or we merited anything, kind of kneeling down, as it were, to help us. Of course, only a word picture of God, the Spirit, doesn't have knees or anything like that.

Here we have all blessings because of grace. Spurgeon said grace will save you and peace will make you know that you are saved. Interesting. John Flavel, grace is to corruption as water is to fire. Grace and peace.

These dear saints, they need to be reminded of who Jesus is and don't we all. Then if you look at chapter one, it's pretty simple. I'm going to be preaching through Colossians just in four weeks. I'm not going to start in four weeks, but I'm going to preach through it in four weeks total.

That is to say, chapter one, one sermon. Chapter two, one sermon. Chapter three, one sermon. Any guesses for chapter four? That is correct. One sermon. Therefore, when I look at the big picture, it helps me.

Yes, sometimes I think I've gone too slowly when I preach through the Bible. I think I've just taken probably too many systematic theology detours, probably in a braggadocio manner tell people, oh, it's taken me nineteen and a half years to preach through Matthew.

That doesn't... I'm going to get to Luke soon. Luke's a long book. It's going to take a long time, but I don't want it to take nineteen years. I'd like to actually finish it before I die. It's going to be like the Winchester house.

As long as you keep adding to the house, the lady owner thought, Mrs. Winchester, she would stay alive. I think it was the wife, right? Therefore, as long as I'm still in Luke, I'm going to be alive. Therefore, when I start getting to chapter 20, 21, I'm going to really slow it down to extend the life.

I don't think that's going to work, do you? I don't think that's going to... That's not what we're after, right? That's like Judge Judy saying... And how long have you been on that medication? How long have you been on that medication?

Prayer, Preeminence, and Proclamation in Colossians 1

Alright. Chapter 1 of Colossians. Easy to think about, big picture. You want to know what Colossians 1 is about? Let's even use alliteration. Prayer, preeminence, proclamation. Paul prays, he talks about the preeminence of Jesus, and then he talks about the proclamation of Jesus.

That's a pretty good setup there. That's a pretty good way to go. You've got a prayer to God with thanksgiving in there, and then you're going to talk about how great Jesus is, and then you're going to talk about how he should be proclaimed.

There's probably a sermon there, don't you think? Somehow. I think somehow there's a sermon there. Paul starts off with prayer. Then he goes to the preeminence, and then he goes to the proclamation. People want to know with this book, who were these false teachers exactly?

Were they Gnostics? Well, Gnostics didn't come along until later, but maybe... Were they proto-Gnostics? Pre-Novel? Incubation Gnostics? I don't think I've ever heard that before. Incubationist Gnostics?

I've heard of Imputationists, but not Incubationists. Maybe Steve Meister will talk about that when he's here, the Incubationist. What was the false teaching? What were they trying to do? Was it an early form of Gnosticism?

Hey, matters really bad, spirits good. Was it... There's a lot of angels that are great. Maybe we should worship angels, and angels are tied into some kind of system. Was it, well, with Judaism, there was some mysticism that snuck into Judaism, and maybe they were doing things that was kind of crazy.

What if the locals were into paganism and evil spirits, and they had to go to them to try to get protection, and get a little, I don't know, some type of amulet from Michael or Gabriel or something? Was there a person there who was, to use S. Lewis Johnson's words, like a shaman-like person?

And maybe that's the ESV Study Bible that says, shaman-like figure with a church that attracted a following and presenting himself as a spiritual guide. That's what the ESV Study Bible says. What do we know about these heretics?

Since he didn't say it directly, we have to kind of make these inferences, and we have to say to ourself, okay, Paul seems to be saying that Jesus, oh, sorry, Paul is saying Jesus is superior, Jesus is sufficient, Jesus is preeminent, we proclaim him, there's no one else, there's nobody greater, everybody else is created, everything else is created, including angels, and there's a lot of talk in Colossians about fullness and full knowledge, and therefore whether it was some type of Gnostic kind of deal, pre-Gnosticism, or somebody else went around saying we've got the inside scoop, everything you need is in Christ, that's the point.

Everything you need is in Christ. So I don't think you have to, sorry if we're going for a little rabbit trail here, I don't think you have to totally identify with absolute certainty this was the person of ill will, and he taught this exactly, these were the leaders who said these things in particular.

We get this letter that Paul writes, Paul knows about what's going on, and he ends up talking about who Jesus is anyway, and so I don't need to know that, because the wonderful thing now is I can just say whatever false teaching comes my way, well, I know I have the answer, and the answer's found in the Lord Jesus, and when there's any false teaching about how to get to heaven, I know who Jesus is.

If there's any false teaching about sanctification, we understand, even there in chapter 1, the first few verses, in Christ, union with Christ, and that we are in Him, and that we don't have to worry, we don't have to be hopeless, we don't have to be loveless, we don't have to be faithless, we are in Christ, and He has graced us in the Beloved, the Father has, and applied that by the Holy Spirit, and He has given us peace with Himself by nailing all our debts to the Lord Jesus' account, and Jesus obeying for us, and everything we need is found in the Lord Jesus.

Christ's Sufficiency Against False Teaching and Eternal Subordination

So, that's for you, Christian, by the way. Any kind of false teaching is going to attack the deity of Christ, who Jesus is, His sufficiency, everything else. You can just go back to Colossians, and even these days with people talking about eternal subordination of the Son, this would be a good chapter for those folks to reckon with, because there's no eternal subordination, there's no primacy of the Father who's greater than the Son in eternity.

If we want to talk about the Incarnation, that's a different story. Well, I think that's probably all I have today. My name's Mike Ebenroth, this is No Compromise Radio Ministry, and you can write me, mike at nocompromiseradio .com.

Don't forget Steve Meister coming here May, excuse me, March 24th through 26th. I'll be in Oregon coming up this June, June 23, 24, and 25 with my friend Kofi, and we've got hopefully an S. Lewis Johnson commentary coming your way sometime.

See you soon.