WWUTT 610 Q&A Small Town Disciplinary Heresies?

What are some ways that we can help meet the needs in small communities for sound doctrine? If you have a disagreement with a brother in a different church, do

Matthew 18 rules still apply? And what is heresy? The answers to these questions when we understand the text.

You're listening to When We Understand the Text, a daily Bible teaching podcast to help encourage your time in the

Word. Find all our videos, including transcripts for those videos, when you visit our website www .utt

.com. Now here's your host, Pastor Gabe. Thank you, Becky. You're welcome. Hey, I've got some bad news.

Uh -oh. No, no, no. Bad news. No. I don't like bad news. I'm losing weight.

Really? Yes. Oh, you've took my scale. That's true. Do you know where I took it?

Do you know where your scale is? Uh -uh. It's at the church. Oh, really? Yes. I took it there not to weigh myself.

That's helpful for me. Yes. I took it there to weigh the keyboard. Uh -huh.

Yeah. Because I was going to sell the keyboard. Well, I know. I've been looking around the house for it everywhere. Oh, okay. Yeah. Because I didn't know where you put it.

I needed to hoist that thing up on the scale and stand it up. Because when I put it on eBay,

I was like, I'm going to lose weight. I need to know how much the keyboard's going to weigh and what the dimensions are. Yeah, it is.

95 pounds. Wow. Inside that flight case, it's 95 pounds. I was going to compare that to something that we know that weighs that same amount, but I'm not going to.

Our daughter? Uh -huh. I don't think she's 95 pounds. She's not. She is. She's 95 pounds now?

No way. Nine -year -old Annie is 95 pounds. She's almost my height.

Well, I know. But still. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. That just doesn't. I don't believe it. I mean, my sister all the way through high school was 90 pounds, and Annie's not even in high school yet.

Of course. But she's the size of your sister. Yeah, I know. Amy was five foot nothing. She's taller than my sister. Annie is.

Yeah. I think. Yeah. I think Annie or Amy was. She might have been 4 '11". I don't remember what she was.

I remember at one point, I was more than a foot taller than she was, because I was like, I think I was 5 '11", and she was 4 '10", or something like that, while we were in high school together.

Then I got to be 6 '1", and now I'm shrinking. Now I'm down to six foot. But anyway. So, I'm also losing weight.

Okay. Do you know why? No. Because. You're munching? I went through. No. No. Yeah, because I'm eating.

I'm losing weight. Yes. Because throughout all of 2017, what was I not consuming?

Soda. Soda. I was not drinking soda at all, which is an appetite suppressant for me. Oh, and now you're drinking it again.

I'm drinking it again. So, I'm losing weight. I wondered about that. I actually considered that. Yep. I just didn't want to sound like a doofus.

I'm feeling my pants line loosening again. Oh, great. Yeah. Congratulations. You can drink soda and lose weight.

No, no, no, no, no. It's a curse. Get this. Get this. It's a curse. So, in the past, I have been wanting to get in shape, if you will.

And we have had these conversations. And as soon as I have the conversation with him just about me, me wanting to eat healthier and do exercise and yada, yada, yada, he automatically loses weight.

Just because. Just because I said something about myself. Not about him, but about me.

Yep. And then he's like, oh, yeah. Ding. And boom, it's gone.

Power of positive thinking. Right. You're just not thinking. You don't have enough faith.

You're just not thinking positively enough. Oh, my goodness. So many people are going to angry write you emails.

Gabe loves Benny Hinn. It's coming. It's going to happen. No, I meant about you losing weight.

Just talking about it. Oh, right. And drinking soda. I'm going to get angry emails because I'm losing weight.

Not because I said you don't have enough faith. Yep. Because they know you're joking. But they know that that's serious.

All right. So all of our donations just tanked all of a sudden. Yep. And speaking of the power of positive thinking and word of faith and all that.

So we actually have a question related to that. Oh, interesting. How's that for a segue?

Somehow I know these things without knowing that. You can submit your questions to whenweunderstandthetext at gmail .com.

And as mentioned last week, we have pre -recorded this program even more in advance than we usually do.

Yes, we did. Because we are at G3, the G3 conference in Atlanta. Two of the questions that we're receiving today, that we're reading today, were actually sent by people who said,

Hey, looking forward to seeing you at G3. Awesome. So by the time we read these questions,

God willing, we've already met these individuals. That'd be cool. So this first one, it comes from...

Hang on. Oh, this goes back to a question that we answered last week related to satellite campuses.

So you have a small town church that wants sound teaching, but there's not a pastor there that can offer them sound teaching.

And nobody wants to even move there, which is a typical problem for small towns.

So what if they set up a camera in our church and videoed me and beamed it back into the church where they're gathering in their little small town?

Would that be acceptable? And I said that would be okay with the expectation that eventually you're raising up your own pastor to be able to teach you and shepherd you in that church.

Right. Because I'm not shepherding you. And to take over. Right. Exactly. Take over that responsibility. Right. So I don't personally know you.

You don't know me. I can't shepherd you. So you have to want to raise up somebody who would be mature in the faith who would be able to shepherd that flock.

And then the idea that I provided would be that somebody would listen to my sermons or any sound teacher.

I was the one that was used in the example. So just went with that. But any sound teacher's teaching.

You listen to that sermon and then you go through the scriptures. You labor over it.

You pray about it. Then you take that message to your congregation and you share it with your congregation.

Right. And I don't think that you're doing anything that would be immoral.

It's not like a violation of copyright or you're stealing someone else's stuff.

You can quote them. Right. Exactly. If you were to start taking personal ownership of it, this is all my stuff.

Well, then that would be dishonest. And I came up with. Right. But I mean, it's all from the word of God. I would hope that we're all coming to the same answer.

Right. If we're mature in our understanding of what the scripture says. So that would be.

And if it's something new that nobody's thought of before, don't do it. Study more.

You're wrong. That's right. That's exactly right. If you're coming up with something nobody else has come up with before, it's wrong.

Red flags. So that was the idea that I gave last week on bringing sound teaching to a small town church where you can't find another sound church anywhere in the near vicinity.

Right. But you love the gospel and you want the gospel to be proclaimed in your town. So Deb wrote in and she said, hey,

I was just listening to you answering a question about how people in small towns with no biblical pastors can get good teaching.

And I thought your answer was very inventive in a good way. I wonder if Christians in this country are a little stuck in the model that we're used to, expecting that each congregation has a full time pastor, a church building, etc.

In the mission field, wouldn't we expect that many people have come to faith without an established church in sight?

I have heard of people without a qualified preacher gathering on the Lord's Day and just reading scripture instead of having a sermon.

It seems the first century churches may have used a similar model when they were getting started.

They could sing, pray and read the Old Testament scriptures and Paul's letters while elders were being raised up.

What do you think? Yeah, I think that's very likely how that would have gone. That's an excellent point.

The example that I used last week was from the island of Crete when

Titus was sent there to appoint elders in all of the churches. So, they had received the gospel, churches had been planted, but there had not been an apostle that had come to visit those respective churches or somebody that had been sent by one of the apostles to go there and raise up mature men of God to be the elders in those churches.

But those churches still existed, even though they didn't have elders or even a plurality of elders.

So, what would have been going on? Well, it would have been the body believers gathering together to sing songs, the songs that they knew that had been taught to them probably from or through apostolic preaching.

They had the scriptures, they would have had the Old Testament scriptures and they knew from the apostolic teaching how those

Old Testament scriptures pointed to Christ and still had the promises of God through the

Davidic covenant fulfilled in Christ. They're still end times teaching even within the

Old Testament, so they had things related to that. Because they were becoming lazy. Yeah, that's right.

They were lazy gluttons on the island of Crete. So, the instruction of labor to do work, you had the law of God which

Paul describes in his letter to the Galatians was a tutor for them, and of course the

Psalms, all of the promises that are there in the Psalms. So there was a lot, I mean there was enough material there for that body of believers to be fed, but to grow in maturity even beyond that, they needed elders to be raised up that would shepherd that flock.

So, another thing they were doing as they were gathering together was partaking in the Lord's Supper and also doing baptisms.

There were probably people getting married and being given in marriage, and so there was rejoicing together as a body whenever you're seeing two families come together, and doing that in a way that honors the

Lord. And there were funerals as well, because you had people who were being put to death, martyred because of their faith.

And so likewise, you had saints that were coming together to mourn the loss of a brother or sister in Christ by the sword, but also to rejoice in knowing that they have put off this body, but are present forever with the

Lord, which is the same anticipation and hope that every single one of us has. So there certainly were lots of things for the church to do, even if there was not an elder or a plurality of elders that had been raised up among them to continue to shepherd and teach them.

So this could very likely be the kind of scenario that we would see happen even in a small town in USA, that a town that does not have a church where there's sound teaching being practiced, but you have people who love the gospel and they want the gospel to be proclaimed.

And so they're gathering together, they're reading the Word of God, they're praying and asking that the

Lord would provide for them a teacher that might continue to shepherd them and raise them up. And so Deb actually goes on to talk a little bit more about that.

She shares a personal experience. On a related note, I hope that your listener

Avery, Avery was the one that asked the question last week, will be encouraged to continue to pray for God to send a pastor, no matter how small their town.

Only a few years ago, no sound biblical teaching could be found in our town of about 20 ,000 people.

That's about the size of Junction City, a little bit larger than that. Well, twice that size when you throw in Fort Riley. Where the

Unitarian Universalists are the hottest thing going. That was what was going on in her community. Some were driving an hour away to an

OPC church, which is an Orthodox Presbyterian church. Though this is sometimes impossible in the winter, a small group began gathering to pray that the

Lord would bring them a biblical teacher slash pastor. After a year or two of faithful prayer, through a series of unlikely circumstances, our current pastor, who had no plans to be a church planner, found himself called to plant our current church.

That was six years ago. Oh, that's awesome. Two years ago, we acquired an intern who was in training under our pastor with the intent to plant a church in an even smaller town of under 2 ,000 people.

That was about the size of the town that I graduated high school in. I think it was 1 ,200 people or something like that. Harrington, how big is that?

Yeah, it's about that. About that? Okay. So Becky and I both graduated high school in small Kansas town.

And that was about 40 minutes away from them in that little town. We prayed diligently that he would find people in the town to help start the church or that some members of our congregation would agree to go with him to this outlying community.

However, just a few weeks before his planned move date, nothing had happened.

Then suddenly, a man contacted our pastor out of the blue from halfway across the country to ask for our pastor's help because he wanted to move to that same tiny town to start a church.

Oh, neat. Turns out that he is a solid man and a very competent teacher. And he has helped to plant the new church and is now in training to be the second elder at that location.

As of now, both men make tents, that's in quotes, because that's like the bivocational position that Paul had where he was a tent maker while he was in Ephesus as well as preaching the gospel.

So as of now, both men make tents because the church is not large enough to support them. But we expect the town to be taken by revival any day now.

I'm sure you've seen the same thing. When we diligently pray for God's kingdom to come, God is faithful to answer our prayers.

For those who so desire solid teaching that they would consider piping in another pastor's sermon, let them remember that they need more than a preacher.

They need a shepherd. And if they ask, God will provide. So pray, pray, pray.

I think that's a great story, Deb, and it is terrific advice. So I think that. Most definitely. Yes. Amen.

I remember a question that we had. This was before you joined us on the Q &A, which is join us, join me on the

Q &A. Well, I did open and close. That's right. You did. Now it's an us before it wasn't a, yeah, it's just the opening and closing part.

But I remember a year or so ago that somebody from Canada had written in and said, you know, we live in Timbuktu, actually probably closer to Siberia by comparison.

Not Timbuktu, but Siberia. Anyway, she said, we live up here.

We don't have any sound teaching. The closest church is so many miles away. You know, what do we do?

And the encouragement to them was be faithful to the word and pray, pray, pray, pray that the

Lord would send a teacher to you. Yeah. Yeah. So hopefully it would be somebody who would be able to accept that position by vocationally.

They could shepherd that church, the members of that church congregation with the personal affection that a shepherd should be showing members of a church, but also have another job and the church would be gracious enough to know, hey, this man has to provide for himself and for his family.

And so we can't expect him to meet our demands 24 seven or full time, right. Or what we typically expect of a full time pastor to do.

And so, and I've had, I've had a lot of friends who were part time pastors and those men tend to convict me more than I end up convicting them.

Oh, really? Yeah. Right. Because they're just talking about how more plugged into the community they are than I am.

Right. Because they are. They do have that advantage. Right. Part time ministers, but then also work, you know, secular jobs, some other kind of job where they would have to make enough money to be able to provide for their family.

I remember a pastor friend of mine down in Texas, panhandle of Texas. So you're talking way up north in Texas, who was a bivocational minister and he worked for the school system.

And I think he worked both janitorial duties and bus driver. So yeah, he had a lot on his on his plate doing the stuff that he did.

But that is a lot. Anyway, that's that's a let me let me put a word out there for for those young pups who are in seminary.

I can actually say that now, probably of the age where I'm now addressed. I'm not a young pup myself anymore.

So so for those who are in seminary and you're wondering, where am I going to go with this? What's going to happen now?

Where am I going to become a pastor? You probably have dreams and ambitions of being a pastor in a large church.

And surely you have in your mind what an ideal church size would be like three, four, five hundred people.

That's what I'm looking at for a church. And that's not necessarily wrong to have those kinds of of desires, as long as it's, you know, you're seeking to benefit yourself, right?

But surely you have a model in your mind of the kind of church that you would like to pastor. I would like to encourage you to find a small town church to be a pastor of, even if it means that by pastoring that church, you would have to be doing that by vocationally.

The things that you will learn from that will be hugely beneficial should the

Lord call you to a larger ministry down the road. And plus, you might even consider that missionary work in the sense that that community would otherwise not receive a pastor or not be blessed enough to have a pastor that teaches sound doctrine if it wasn't for the fact that the

Lord had laid on your heart to go into that smaller community and pastor there. And I don't want to say this,

I also don't want to say this from the approach of go serve there for a few years and then you can go serve in a larger church, because I don't think that should be your approach.

You should be fully devoted to that community and that church, however long the

Lord would have you there, whether it would be for a few years or you would spend your entire life there.

Right. And would even retire in a small town or something like that. And be grateful for that.

Yeah. Serve the Lord with all your heart. Serving heart. Right. Servant's heart. Servant's heart.

Yeah. There we go. I was close. What's the Tim Hawkins, when he said servant's heart, you're just telling me

I have a servant's heart because you want me to stack chairs. That's what you're telling me. But you know what? It happens.

You know what? As a pastor, you may even have to be doing that. You've done worse. I've had to do worse than stacking chairs.

Yes. We have an old building. We'll just leave it at that. Plenty of things

I've had to mop up. I have never thought I would end up having to do that, but all to the glory of God, my brothers and sisters.

Amen. All to the glory of God. So yeah, if you are in seminary and you would desire to pastor a church, let me encourage you to pick a small town and go to that church.

And even when we've got high school students in our church who are going from high school into college, and they'll say, what college should

I pick? I'll recommend a community college first. Do some classes at a community college.

Easiest way to knock those out. You can do that practically debt free and then go to a larger college from there.

I took them in high school. Yeah. Took my core classes. Yeah. That's what I did too.

Yeah. The core classes from a community college while you're in high school. Yeah. Right. I did the same thing. I just kind of have this mentality of start small.

I don't know if that came from graduating high school. Yeah. Right. I myself was starting small.

Well, it helps you on a smaller scale of figuring out how the flow of things go and how to manage what you have in front of you.

And then as you pile on things, you can be like, okay, now I need more attention in this area than this area.

And you're progressing into it. Yeah. Instead of... I mean, there are perks for having small and then growing.

And whenever you do start in a small town, don't forget about the people in the country. Yeah. I mean, starting that radio station out in Southwest Kansas, there is hardly anybody out there.

Yeah. Rural USA. Until you figure in all of those farmers and they came together to pull that radio station out there.

Yeah. Because the farmers wanted to listen. They wanted Christian radio on their tractor. All they had in some of those places, all they had was

KFRM, which was the AM farm station. Oh. Oh. Yeah.

You know what I'm talking about? Yeah. And that was the only thing. So you're talking late 80s, early 1990s on the far

Western end of the Texas and Oklahoma panhandle and all they were getting was the farming station on the

AM. That was the only thing you could find on the radio anywhere. Right. And then we planted that Christian radio station there in Southwest Kansas.

So they pulled together and got you guys to come out there. And I mean, that's kind of how church works too.

I mean, you start small, but then the people around you from surrounding towns here and countrysides here, and then they come too.

So it's not that you're going to stay small necessarily. You don't have to look at that way. You're looking at it as an evangelism effort.

Exactly. Right. Regardless of the size of the church. Exactly. I agree. The word spreads.

That's right. It does. Yay. And then you've got the wonderful atmosphere of farmers where ministering around them is going to make the parable of the sower come to life in a way for you.

You're like, wow, this makes so much more sense now. Growing up in the city, I never would have known.

I have so much respect for farmers, but that could be because my grandpa's one. Both your grandpa's.

Well, kind of. One is more. One's a country farmer. Right. And one kind of lives on the edge of a city, basically.

Right. But he, I mean, he plants his garden and everything. He still grows a lot. Mostly chickens.

And has chickens and things like that. Birds of all sorts. Yeah. Well, thank you for your email,

Deb, expounding upon that advice a little bit more. Sorry. Kind of rabbit trail.

And Deb is one. She's one of the messages we received today that we're meeting at G3.

Hopefully we have already met her. Exactly. This next one comes from Kevin. Question for the podcast, he says, when a member of one local body sins against a member of a different local body, is

Matthew 18 still applicable? I loaned a friend over a thousand dollars last January with an agreement that he'd pay me back 60 bucks a month starting in April.

We're now almost four months behind. And after numerous attempts to contact him, he's just ignoring me.

Is this something with which I should approach his fellow church members, I know many of them, in an attempt to square things away?

Or should I just stop at trying to contact him and just dealing with the fact that I may be out several hundred bucks?

Well, Kevin, I'm going to give you two answers. I'm going to give you my answer to this question.

And then I'm going to answer the way I know Chris Solano would answer this question.

Oh, yes, because you guys differ on a lot. We do. Sometimes we differ on these things. But I think that both answers are helpful.

OK. And so you can you can decide yourself through wisdom and prayer what the best course of action will be.

So my response to you would be this. Just let it go. Right. Because, you know, as Jesus says in Matthew chapter five, give to the one who begs from you and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you.

It would be better for you to just be defrauded than to raise a stink about it, cause a potential conflict between you and a brother and maybe even getting two churches involved in that.

So Paul says, First Corinthians six, when one of you has a grievance against another, does he dare go to law before the unrighteous instead of the saints?

Or do you not know that the saints will judge the world? And if the world is to be judged by you, are you incompetent to try trivial cases?

Do you not know that we are to judge angels? How much more than matters pertaining to this life? So if you have such cases, why do you lay them before those who have no standing in the church?

I say this to your shame. Can it be that there is no one among you wise enough to settle a dispute between the brothers?

Now, I understand that in this particular case, this is not a matter of suing somebody. Kevin's going about this the right way.

He wants to handle this between brothers and between churches, even if possible. But if it can't happen, like this guy's clearly ignoring you, going out of your way to try to grab ahold of him and say, hey, dude, you owe me some money would just cause a major conflict.

Then I would say the advice is better in verse seven of that chapter, First Corinthians six, where Paul says to have lawsuits at all with one another is already a defeat for you.

Why not rather suffer wrong? Why not rather be defrauded? So if it's going to help you prevent a conflict, let the money go.

I know it stinks. You're out. We've done that a few times. We've had to do that before, too. Yeah. Becky and I have given money to someone else, and we observe them using it in the way that was contrary to what they told us they needed the money for, but just having to let it go.

It is what it is. We are entrusting ourselves to the Lord, and whether or not they use that money in an honest way is going to be between them and God.

But then there are other times when Becky and I will agree that we're going to give somebody something, and then the two of us are praying together or we're agreeing with each other.

It does not matter how they use this money. So that way we're not disappointed in any way, and we'll even hand it to them and say this is for whatever you want to use this on.

So just because we know you could use it. Yeah. I would answer it that way, too.

I would say if you've tried and it's going to start causing a conflict in your relationship with them, then just let it go.

Yes. So that's my answer. And without bitterness. Without bitterness, right. With a cheerful heart.

Yes. You are doing this to the joy of the Lord. We do all things to the glory of God. And it helped that person, and that's what they needed it for.

That's right. That's right. You just helped a brother. Exactly. Exactly. So be celebratory in Christ over that.

God, thank you for this opportunity to have shown love to my brother in this way. And then just let it go. And bless you with that.

I mean, that kind of extra money to be able to. To do that for somebody else.

Right. Right. And I pray you do it again. That this experience doesn't put you off helping somebody else in the future.

So that's my answer. So how would Chris respond? How would Chris answer this question? Well, here's what Chris would say.

Chris, too. Just kidding. I'm just kidding. Yes. Chris would say that according to.

And by the way, let me add before I get into his answer. If you listen to this past Sunday's sermon on the

What Podcast channel. Right. Whatever. Anyway. So a few weeks ago,

I started including the sermons on Sundays because folks had asked that I would do that. Right. And so if you listen to the one this past Sunday, you heard

Chris because he preached at the end of that sermon leading us into the Lord's Supper. And anyway, so he has been on this program.

If you listen to that sermon. So Chris would say this. According to Romans 15 verse one, you who are strong have an obligation to bear with the failings of the weak and not to please yourself, but for his good to build him up.

Therefore, it is your duty as a mature believer in Christ to hold your brother accountable to his word.

He said that he was going to pay it back. You need to hold him to that so that you're raising up a man of integrity.

Right. And this is not about the money. It's not about benefiting you. It's about benefiting him so that you are raising him up as a disciplined man of the

Lord to be true to his word. And this is holding him to paying back his debts as Christ has instructed us to do.

Right. Let your yes be yes and your no be no. Precisely. And iron sharpening iron. Yeah.

I get it. I get it. So that's the way Chris would answer that question. Are you feeling convicted suddenly?

A little. Yeah. Thanks, Chris. He wasn't even here.

He's not even here. And yet I know exactly. I'll have to thank him on Sunday. I know exactly the way he would answer that question.

So Kevin, there's two pieces of advice for you. And if you would follow Chris's advice, it would be at that point,

I would say that you go to the man who owes you money and you would approach him again and try to find him personally if you can, because clearly you're trying to reach out to him and he's ignoring your calls.

Right. But go to him personally and say, hey, man, you still owe me money and explain to him that at this point, this is really not about the money that you owe me.

This is as a brother in the Lord, I want to hold you to your word and I want to help you be a man of integrity.

And so maybe you might even say at that point, whatever you're giving back to me, I'm going to give to this charity just to show this is not about me, but this is about holding you to your word or something.

You don't have to do that, but that's just a suggestion that I might offer to you. And then if he still refuses or maybe if he says, well, yeah, man, yeah,

OK, I know I need to do that. And yet he still doesn't pay you back. So you're still holding him to his word.

Talk to somebody in his church since you said you know people in his church. Talk to someone who is not necessarily a pastor or an elder, but is certainly somebody of a teaching position that he might respect, like a

Sunday school teacher or a Bible study leader. Yeah. And then also talk. More than just chummy though. Yeah. More than just like a friend relationship.

Right. But somebody. Somebody who will take that charge. Somebody who has an evidence of maturity in their faith.

Got it. And they're standing within that church too. And then from your own congregation, grab another brother, someone that you would trust.

So now you've got the evidence of two or three witnesses and from two different congregations.

So somebody from your church and somebody from his church and then approaching him again and then saying, brother, we've been talking to you about this and you have not yet paid me back.

Now, I would hope then at that point he's now truly convicted over this and you're right. I need to pay you back.

But even if after that, the evidence of two or three witnesses, he's not paying back the money.

I would say at that point to let it go, not let it go all the way to the point of church discipline unless there's been some clear sin that he really does need to repent of.

But it doesn't go to the point of him having to be dragged in front of the church and saying, you haven't paid back this man, you know, two or three hundred bucks.

And so we're going to remove you from membership of the congregation. I don't know. Maybe his heart is that sinful.

I'm not in that situation to know that that personally, but hopefully I've given you enough there that you now have some options.

You know where to go and how you should and how you should handle the matter. And Becky has been truly convicted by this exchange as well.

Thanks a lot, Chris. Last question here, this one comes from Caleb in Los Angeles.

And here at the beginning of the program, I said we were going to get to a Benny Hinn question. Oh, yeah, that's right.

Here it is. Caleb said, what would be considered a heretic? I feel like I should know this, but I'm confused on the matter, to be honest.

For example, what is it exactly that makes Benny Hinn a heretic? He's kind of the

I guess he's kind of the quintessential heretic because it's like every time we end up talking about heresies, somehow his name is it's either him or Joel Osteen.

It's always one of those two. But where we get the the word heresies from, as far as an

English translation of the Bible goes, there's really only one place that heretic is mentioned, and that's in 2

Peter 2 1. So as Peter is giving a warning about the false teachers throughout that whole second chapter of 2

Peter, he says, but false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the master who bought them, bringing upon themselves swift destruction.

And so Peter equates this with the false teaching of the of the false shepherds in Israel whom we read about in like the book of Ezekiel or in Jeremiah or someplace like that.

The judgment that God says he's going to bring upon those shepherds, the false teachers, because they fattened themselves instead of fed the flock of God, which was what they were supposed to do.

So just as they were false prophets, so there will also be false teachers among you.

And Peter, Peter's not simply saying here, watch out for false teachers. He's saying there will be false teachers among you.

Be on the lookout. Right. The reason why we have to be on the lookout for false teachers is because the Bible said there were going to be false teachers.

Right. Second Thessalonians chapter two, God sends them a strong delusion to believe what is false.

So this is revealing the heart that they already had that was against God. Right. Wolves among the sheep.

Exactly. Precisely. So they secretly bring in destructive heresies.

So we must be discerning to recognize heresy. So what would heresy be exactly?

The way that I've defined heresy in the past, even on this podcast, has been whatever is contrary to saving faith.

If it would lead someone away from the doctrine of saving faith doctrines that lead to saving faith in Christ Jesus, anything that would lead away from that would be heresy.

So you. So, for example. For example, if somebody teaches that Jesus Christ was not

God, he was only a man, but he was not God in human flesh.

That would be a heresy because only the God man could live a perfect life and die for our sins and and thus his blood being the atoning sacrifice for our sins.

Right. Acceptable and pleasing to the Lord. Only Christ could do that. A man who is born of the seed of Adam is incapable of living a perfect life.

So if Jesus was not God, he could not have been perfect. And therefore we're still dead in our sins and our transgressions because those sins have not been paid, have not been paid for by the precious blood of Christ.

Right. So that would be an example of a heresy. All right. Trinity denying the Trinity is a heresy.

Now, when you come when you first come to Christ, you probably have very little concept of the of the Trinity.

Right. You know that that's true. Jesus Christ was sent by God to die on the cross for our sins and all who believe in him will not perish, but will have everlasting life.

Our sins are forgiven in Christ. I was a sinful, wretched man. Christ died for me.

I believe in him. And so now before God, I know that I have been forgiven and I and I stand before him innocent now of my sins because of what

Jesus did for me. Right. And now he lives in my heart. Right. Yeah. The Holy Spirit within me.

Anyway, to the extension of however much we can flesh out that gospel right there. But but there's your basic overview of the gospel that you heard that convicted you in your heart of your rebellion against God and your need for a savior.

So in that understanding of the gospel, you know, there is God in heaven.

There is Jesus, whom he sent. There seems to be a difference there. But I don't know how to frame that in my mind.

How do I explain the difference between God and Jesus? Right. Jesus is God. God, the father sent

Jesus. He is he is God, but he is a different person than God, the father.

So there's there's some sort of concept of that in your brain. But you couldn't give it like an orthodox definition of Trinity.

Right. And and even and those were in come the the like sun or water or like sun in the sky.

Not not sorry of God. Sorry. Yeah. Sun in the sky, sun in the sky. Metaphor.

Yeah, whatever you want to call it, it gives the sun gives heat and it gives light and it gives you vitamin

D. So there's three different three different things that come from the sun. Yeah. Then you get into all your metaphors that start waxing close to heresy and all this kind of stuff.

But anyway, the point being that when you came to Christ, you had some sort of a concept of Trinity, even though you would not have you probably didn't even know the word

Trinity Trinity or how to define that word or any of those things. But it's it's outright denying it.

That then becomes heretical when you are saying, well, God isn't triune.

He's not he's not three persons in one God. What are you talking about? The father is the son.

God came down from heaven and Jesus Christ and died for us. And so then once you start getting into that area, then you're denying something fundamental about God.

Right. You are believing in a different God than the God of the Bible. And that becomes heresy, especially when you consider that the

Trinity, the doctrine of the Trinity is the defining doctrine of the Christian faith.

It is the doctrine that separates Christianity from all other monotheistic religions.

It is unique to Christianity and no other religion possesses it. So that is that is a central doctrine to the

Christian faith. And to deny it is to believe something completely different than the faith that was given to us by Christ Jesus.

If you know Christ, you know the father. First John two twenty two. Whoever denies the father and the son is an antichrist.

And so you have neither the father nor the son, nor do you have the Holy Spirit, since according to first John five, it is the

Holy Spirit that testifies to the identity of the father and the son. So anyway, like I said, when you come to the faith, you may not be able to give some sort of understanding of the doctrine of the

Trinity, but to outright deny it or reject it is then when it becomes heresy. Right. And then as you're growing and maturing as a

Christian and then to say, well, God is not triune, you know, you're revealing that the salvation that you had received wasn't real, wasn't from Christ.

Right. You're just following a religion, but you don't actually know Christ is savior. So these are examples of heresy.

If it leads away to a doctrine of saving faith, then it is it's heretical.

And so what makes Benny Hinn a heretic? Well, Benny Hinn's a heretic because he teaches things that are contrary to saving faith.

Right. And it's not just a matter of his faith healing, which is problematic enough, or his prosperity theology.

Here's here's a clip of Benny Hinn teaching his prosperity theology right here. Do you know that God never blesses sheep before he blesses shepherds?

Shepherds get it first, then the sheep get it because sheep follow shepherds. If we if we shepherds follow sheep, we're going to have poo on on on our shoes.

Is that an Israeli word? Something like that. So so the sheep must follow the shepherds.

And God always blesses the shepherds first. So a pastor can never see his church prosper if he's poor.

See never. Well, it's not in the Bible. I agree with that. It's not in the Bible. But there he's saying that a church can't prosper if the pastor isn't rich.

So the pastor has to be rich first. Right. And then the rest of the church will get rich.

Right. But God doesn't bless poor people. Right. Wait a minute.

Don't we read in Matthew five, blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs will be the kingdom of heaven.

I'm pretty sure that that I've read that somewhere before. Pretty sure that he skipped that a few times.

Yeah. Anyway, so this is an that's just an example of Benny Hinn's prosperity theology, which is problematic in itself.

And you have John Piper's sermon where he goes into how the prosperity gospel is heresy because it's making things possessions, material stuff into God.

That's that's the thing that you're out to possess, not God himself, but the material thing.

So therefore that becomes God. That's what you're worshiping. That's what your faith is for rather than to his glory.

So so that the prosperity gospel is heresy in itself. But there are plenty of other things that Benny Hinn teaches that are heretical doctrinally.

So he's got the there's the word faith theology that whatever you speak into existence, it will be.

And he goes as far as saying that as God has had the power to speak things into existence, like let there be light.

So you have that same power. Right. And then he goes from there to talk about his little God theology.

So the thing that you yourself are a God. Oh, no.

And God actually cannot even release blessings to you unless through your prayers you unlock the door, open the door for God's blessing.

So right. That all comes from Benny Hinn. No, that does not come from the Bible. No. And then and then he denies he also denies the doctrine of the

Trinity because he claims that God, the father, God, the son and God, the

Holy Spirit are all their own Trinity. So the father himself is a

Trinity. The son is a Trinity and the Holy Spirit is a Trinity, which is nine persons of the

Trinity rather than three persons. One God, three persons, father, son, Holy Spirit. But he sees nine persons.

Yeah, that doesn't make any sense. No. When you actually read the Bible. Yes, he has he it's nowhere in there.

I can't even remember what his reasoning was behind that. I remember listening to that clip, but I don't remember.

I can't even remember now what it was that, you know, this is one of the things that Justin Peters shares in his series,

Clouds Without Water, which you can watch. I'm so grateful for that. That has been a terrific series.

Go to JustinPeters .org. I think it's the website, JustinPeters .com. Just Justin Peters ministry.

We've done this before. We did this one other time before. JustinPeters .org.

I'm just going to go ahead and type that in. Yep, that's the one I got it right the first time. So then go to JustinPeters .org and click on store and you can buy

Clouds Without Water to show it to your congregation. Oh, please. Or you can watch the original on YouTube when it was called

A Call for Discernment. That was originally the name of the seminar. And we are linked to that, by the way, through the

When We Understand the Text website. So if you go to www .utt .com and click on links, that's the name of the link, links.

And then you'll find it in there. I think it's under sermons or series or something like that. You'll find Justin Peters A Call for Discernment.

And he talks about it there. And I know he plays the Benny Hinn clip there as well of him talking about God being a each person of the

Trinity is their own Trinity. So all of this stuff ties into the fact that what

Benny Hinn teaches is not orthodox. It doesn't come from the scripture. It's just off of the top of his own head, all the weird zaniness that he comes up with.

And and so it leads people away from saving faith. He is not even directing a person to the forgiveness of sins through Jesus Christ, which all must have in order to come to the presence of God.

Right. We must have faith in Jesus Christ, who died on the cross for our sins, rose again from the grave, is seated at the right hand of the father, where he is as our mediator is interceding for us before the throne of God.

So we have access to God through Jesus Christ. And you will never hear

Benny Hinn talk about any of that. It's all about believing in Christ to get the stuff that you want here on Earth, because that's the prosperity gospel.

That's so sad because it's so amazing. I love it. I love listening to the just the gospel.

Yeah, the salvation. Like, yeah, I get excited. How do you get bored with the gospel?

Right. Knowing that it's just amazing. I was a wretched, filthy sinner. And now in Christ Jesus, I've been forgiven and I've become a fellow heir of the kingdom of God.

Right. Which is so much greater and oh, I know, bigger than prosperity. That's what

I'm saying. Right. It just doesn't make any sense why you would belittle it and try to put it in a box.

Suffer in this world and put your hope and faith in Jesus Christ and know that the treasure that is waiting for you is not on planet

Earth, but it is in glory forever with Christ. Oh, it's going to be so much better. Yes. So anyway, that's our program for today.

Oh, wait, wait, wait. What? Doctrines. Doctrines. Oh, yes, yes, yes. OK, so then I was going to I was going to share with you,

Caleb, a good way to remember what essential doctrines are so we can differ on a lot of different secondary doctrines.

For example, we've mentioned a Presbyterian Church, Orthodox Presbyterian Church earlier in this in this episode.

We're from the Southern Baptist Church, so we have a difference of opinion about covenant and baptism.

And yet that's a secondary issue. That's not a church or sorry, that's a secondary issue, not an essential issue.

There we go. So my Presbyterian brothers, I'm going to be rejoicing in heaven with and telling them, hey,

I was right and you were wrong. Right. We'll see.

Becky's more humble about it than I am. So, but, you know, we're rejoicing in these things together.

Oh, yeah. And I love seeing the friendship that John MacArthur had with R .C. Sproul. Oh, yeah.

The friendship that Mark Dever has now with Ligon Duncan and seeing ministers of different denominations.

But they keep the main thing the main thing. Right. So they can love one another in the

Lord, even though they might come from different denominational backgrounds. I think that our teachers are doing that better than the rest of us who aren't, you know, where those platforms are, where those men are agreeing.

Yeah, right. I think they exemplify that better than we do. So we need to be looking at those men as an example of this.

Yes, absolutely. So just for their preaching, but for how they fellowship together. Precisely.

Yes. The holiness that they pursue in their lives together with one another. Right. Differing on these things.

Sure. Mark Dever said that he said, I believe my friend Ligon Duncan is sinning because he baptizes babies.

But but nonetheless, that does not hinder their friendship and their admiration for one another in the

Lord. So we're going to differ on secondary issues. But what about those essential things that unite us as brothers and sisters in Christ?

What are the essential doctrines? What are they? Well, the acronym that Hank Hanegraaff kind of came up with this,

I altered it and have added to it. But he used the word doctrines as an acrostic.

So each doctrine, yeah, I've added an S on it. Right. So each one of those letters points to an essential doctrine of the

Christian faith. So the letter D is the deity of Christ, knowing that Christ is God, essential to saving faith.

The letter O is for, I was going to say orthodox, original sin. It's knowing that we have sinned and we need a savior in order to be right with God.

So true. The letter C stands for canon, which is just another word for the Bible, which is the word of God.

Right. It is through the Bible that we even know about God and the way to saving faith. The letter

T stands for trinity. We worship one God who is three persons. God, the

Father, God, the Son, God, the Holy Spirit. Letter R stands for resurrection. It is necessary to believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

This is the argument that Paul lays out in First Corinthians 15. If Christ has not been raised from the dead, no one gets raised from the dead and you're still dead in your sins and your transgression.

So that is an essential doctrine. The letter I stands for incarnation. So it is knowing that Christ came in the flesh.

And that is something that John points out in his letter in First John, where he says that if anybody believes that Christ has not come in the flesh, then he's an antichrist.

So that's an essential doctrine. Letter N stands for new creation. If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.

The old is gone and the new has come. So the old man is dead. The one who walked in his sins and his transgressions is no more.

He's been crucified with Christ. So now it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives within me.

There should be an evidence of the change in your life that you walk in the newness of life, no longer in the old sinful man, but pursuing the righteousness of Christ.

So if you're still walking in your old ways and you think that's fine, hey, I've been baptized and I punched my get out of hell free card, so now

I can do whatever it is that I want. No, you aren't saved. You are not the new creation.

You're still living in your old sins. Just repent. Yes, you must repent. You must turn from your sin and pursue

Christ. The next one, letter E is is end times. So it's knowing that Jesus Christ is going to return or even

E can stand for eschatology. He is coming back again. And the reason why we know that's an essential doctrine is because Paul was putting people out of the church for teaching falsely on the end times or saying that Christ had already returned when he hadn't yet.

Right. And so that's that's why that doctrine is essential. It is necessary to know that Jesus is returning again to judge the living and the dead.

And then the last letter is S, which stands for salvation by grace through faith, because that is the gospel.

Knowing that we have been justified by grace alone through faith alone in Jesus Christ alone.

And that is the gospel message, not by your works, but by the work of Christ only.

And notice that none of that points to us. Yes. All of that is to the glory of God. Amen. Praise.

Hallelujah. Amen. Glory. All right. So now have I covered that now? Yes. Covered all my bases there.

All right. I'm happy. Thank you. If you would like to submit a question to the podcast, send it to when we understand the text at gmail .com.

Uh, pray for us as we return from Georgia back to Kansas, getting back to our kids. Well, even around Atlanta, I'm kind of nervous about that.

This is the longest we have been away from our children. Oh, yep. As long as you and I have been married, we have not been away from our kids, especially not

Raya, the baby. Thank you to our church for letting us have this time. Amen. Yes.

And, uh, and giving us this trip. Thank you so much. Let's pray. And we're out of here.

All right. Dear Lord, we thank you so much for everything that you give to us. How much we rejoice over the gospel of Jesus Christ, that it is through Christ.

We've been forgiven our sins. And we've been made sons and daughters of God. We've been made fellow heirs of that eternal kingdom.

And I pray that is our longing that as Paul wrote about in Colossians chapter three, that we would fix our eyes above where Christ is because we are seated with Christ in God.

We are there at the right hand of God, even with Christ. And when Christ who is our life appears, then we also will appear with him in glory.

For now we're, we're separated from that, uh, that heavenly home that we have in store for us.

We have that veil that remains between us, but a day is coming, a day upon which you have fixed for Christ to return and judge the living and the dead as talked about in Acts chapter 17.

You have a day in which that veil is going to be removed, and then we will see Christ in all of his glory.

And he returns with his angels and we will be with the Lord forever in the air.

And we are looking forward to that day. And I pray that when that day comes, you find us faithful servants that are working in the service of our great

King while we're here on this earth. Keep us pursuing holiness and righteousness for your name's sake.

Convict us of our sins. And may we come before you to continue to be washed in holiness and made right before our

Lord as we desire to be shaped into the image of Christ so that we may know that he who began a good work in us will be faithful to complete it on the day of his return.

Lead us and guide us in your truth. And we pray these things in Jesus name. Amen. Amen.

Thank you to our church for letting us have this time. Yes. And and giving us this trip.

And I pray that we're coming back energized from everything that we have heard at the conference and we're ready to hit the ground running.

And yeah, we're gonna we're gonna save a thousand people this year. I'm just kidding. We're not. You can't see me, but I'm giving him that look of what?

Yeah, I can't do that. Anyway, it just came out of my mouth. But yeah, that's a recent conference that we had in our own state where I had to listen to a couple of men come up and talk about the churches they were planning.

Like we have a goal to baptize a thousand people this year. I guess that's great if you have that goal.

But that is the work of God that does that. It is not not anything that we can do. The trouble with those things is you end up trying to meet the number rather than Hello.

Hi. Okay. All right. Well, you take her potty and I'll.