WWUTT 1526 Beware of False Prophets (Part 1)

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Here's your teacher, Pastor Gabe. Thank you, Becky, and greetings, everyone. This is the week of the

G3 Conference in Atlanta, Georgia. I am on the road. Instead of taking the time to record devotionals for this week,

I decided to play an older sermon. It's not that old. As a matter of fact, I did this at the beginning of the month at First Baptist Church in Lindale, Texas, preaching from 2

Peter 2. Part one will be today, and then you can hear part one tomorrow.

So here is the sermon, Warning the Church Against False Prophets. If you would please stand with me as we read the

Word of the King. This is 2 Peter 2, and I will read verses 1 through 3.

The Apostle Peter said, But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will also be false teachers among you, who will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the

Master who bought them, bringing swift destruction upon themselves.

And many will follow their sensuality, and because of them the way of truth will be maligned.

And in their greed they will exploit you with false words. Their judgment from long ago is not idle, and their destruction is not asleep.

Pray with me, please. Heavenly Father, as we come to this Word this morning, I pray that you would guide us, that you would sharpen our senses, that you would stir in our hearts a love for the authority of Christ, the truth of His Word, and that we may discern the true

Word from lawless error. Guide us in your truth this morning, we pray in Jesus' name, and all

God's people said, Amen. Thank you. You may be seated. When I first became a senior teaching pastor,

I was amazed at the sermons that I would preach and the response that I would get, just a sea of nodding heads.

I thought, wow, I'm a pretty good pastor. Everybody agrees with everything that I say. I say, Thus saith the

Lord, and everyone's head is nodding. Look at this. What a cooperative church I have. But then

I would be discouraged when I would go home and I would pull up Facebook and I would see the very things that I just preached against being celebrated by members of my congregation online, and it was like they didn't hear what

I was saying at all. So they nod their heads along to Thus saith the Lord, but then they go out and don't practice what they had just heard in church that morning.

So I tried to find ways that I could further get the point home, and one of the things that I noticed was helping people to hear and understand is that if I would attach names to some of the false teachings that I was warning them about, well, that started to offend people.

They were okay with Thus saith the Lord, but then once you said my favorite teacher was one of those false teachers you've been warning me about, well, then they got pretty upset.

And some of you probably heard last week that we had a visitor here who got upset by some of those things that Pastor Tom was naming as he was warning about some of those false teachers.

This happened in second service where a man who was sitting up here in the front row got up and walked down the center aisle and he dusted off his hands and kicked the dust off his feet and proclaimed that he was more righteous than us as he was walking out of church offended by what

Pastor Tom said, preaching the true word of God and warning the flock about those false teachers that malign the way of truth.

Indeed, these things do come to offend those whose hearts are knitted to the ways of the world.

And so we must be careful and we must desire to have our senses sharpened that we love the way of Christ and hate the way of false teachers.

Jesus has warned us of this in the Sermon on the Mount, beware of false prophets who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves.

And Peter, who was most certainly there in the Sermon on the Mount, says something similar here in 2

Peter 2 verse 1, but false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you.

We're going to look at all of 2 Peter 2 this morning. I'm going to spend most of my time, though, here in these first few verses, and then we'll go through the rest of the text later on.

So consider what Peter begins with here. At the start of his letter, he presents himself and the other apostles as the true teachers.

We proclaim to you the truth. Look back a little bit in chapter 1 verse 16.

Peter said, for we did not make known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ following cleverly devised myths, but being eyewitnesses of his majesty.

For when he received honor and glory from God the Father, such an utterance as this was made to him by the majestic glory, this is my beloved

Son with whom I am well pleased. Peter talking about he and James and John who were with Jesus on the

Mount of Transfiguration, and Jesus was transfigured before them, and the voice of God the

Father was heard. He says we ourselves heard this utterance made from heaven when we were with him on the holy mountain, and we have as more sure the prophetic word to which you do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place until the day dawns and the morning star arises in your hearts.

Now look at verses 20 and 21. He says, know this first of all, that no prophecy of scripture comes by one's own interpretation.

For no prophecy was ever made by the will of man, but men being moved by the

Holy Spirit spoke from God. So here we have a presentation of sound teaching in chapter 1, and then going into chapter 2,

Peter warns about those false prophets. But false prophets also arose among the people.

Now that's a historical reference. That's going back to the false prophets in Israel who rose up and led them astray.

In Jeremiah and in Ezekiel, curses issued against those false prophets who did not feed the sheep, but rather led the sheep of Israel astray.

In Jeremiah chapter 29, the Lord said of some of those prophets, they have spoken a word that I did not give them to speak.

And even to this day, there are preachers and teachers who will stand before the church and proclaim a word they will say

God gave to them, but he did not. Stephen Furtick is one of those who will begin his sermons by saying,

God told me to tell you. Beth Moore has put it in her messages as well.

And we must be very careful about those who will say that God personally speaks to them to say something to you.

God does indeed speak to us and he has already spoken to you this morning through the word of God, through the

Bible that you are holding in your hand. God's word has been written and it is being proclaimed and may all words and testimonies be weighed according to this.

So just as there were false teachers in Israel, Peter says there will be false teachers among you.

My friends, there has been false teachers since the garden of Eden. There will always be false teachers among us whispering just as Satan did, did

God really say? And it's from the Bible that we can point to his word and say, thus saith the

Lord. We must be aware that the warning has been given false teachers will arise among us who will secretly introduce destructive heresies secretly.

Just as Jesus said, they'll be in sheep's clothing, they will look and sound like us, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves and they introduce destructive heresies.

What are destructive heresies? A definition of heresy would be those teachings that change the doctrines of the

Christian faith so fundamentally that it can no longer be called saving faith.

That would be a heretical teaching. Let me give you three examples of this. What are three examples of destructive heresies?

Number one, a heretic would be someone who denies that Jesus is

God incarnate. Would you not agree that that would be heretical for someone to deny that Jesus is

God incarnate? John chapter one verses one through three, in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was

God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him and without him was not anything made that was made.

Hebrews one and Colossians one also say that Christ is the one who has made all things.

Verse 14 of John one, and the word became flesh and dwelt among us. And we have seen his glory, glory as of the only son from the father, full of grace and truth.

Listen to these words from John. This is from first John four, one through three. Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God.

For many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the spirit of God.

Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God.

And every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is in the world already.

So it is a heresy to deny that Jesus is God incarnate. Here's a second example.

A second kind of heretic would be someone who denies that Jesus Christ rose bodily from the dead.

Would you agree that we must believe that Jesus Christ is risen from the grave? All four gospels testify to Jesus Christ having died on a cross as an atonement for our sins and risen again from the dead.

Specifically that he rose bodily from the dead. His body was raised back to life.

He did not take on some spiritual form or become a ghost or a phantom. In fact,

Jesus even showed himself to his disciples. He let them touch him so that they could see he really was risen in the flesh.

He ate breakfast with them because a ghost won't eat breakfast with you. So they would know he has really risen from the dead.

The Sadducees did not believe in the resurrection of the dead. When Paul preached about the resurrection of Christ at the

Areopagus in Acts 17, the Greeks mocked him. But some joined him and believed.

In 1 Corinthians 15, 13 to 14, the Apostle Paul said, But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even

Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain.

There's no point to the Christian faith if Christ is not risen from the dead. Verse 16,

For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins.

Verse 20, But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead.

In fact, he has been raised. And as Paul lays out even in 1 Corinthians 15, pointing out that there were more than 500 witnesses to his resurrection between his rising from the grave and his ascending into heaven 40 days later.

Eyewitnesses of his majesty, just as Peter talks about in 2 Peter chapter 1. Christ has been raised from the dead and he is the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep, meaning that there will be more.

We will rise from the dead also if we believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.

In John 6, 40, Jesus said, For this is the will of my father, that everyone who looks on the

Son and believes in him should have eternal life and I will raise him up on the last day.

Here's a third kind of heretic. And that's someone who denies that they are a sinner in need of repentance.

The Apostle Paul spent Romans 1, 18 to 3, 23, establishing that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

There is none righteous, not even one, except for Jesus Christ. He is the only righteous man who ever lived.

The only one who never once committed any sin. Listen to 1 John 1, verses 5 through 10.

This is the message that we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light and in him is no darkness at all.

If we say that we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and we do not practice the truth.

But if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus his son cleanses us from all sin.

If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.

If we confess our sins, he is faithful to forgive us our sins.

He is just to forgive us and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

Verse 10, if we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar and his truth is not in us.

So these are three examples of destructive heresies. There are many other essential doctrines in the

Christian faith concerning this Christ whom we believe in and follow.

But I have given you these three to serve as examples. A Christian must believe that Jesus is

God, that he put on human flesh and dwelt among us, that he died on the cross as an atoning sacrifice for sins, that he was raised from the dead on the third day according to the scriptures, that you have sinned and are in need of a savior, and Jesus Christ is that savior.

Whoever believes in him will be saved. Essential doctrines of the Christian faith. Now as you are sitting where you are sitting today, you may not have disagreed with anything that I just said.

You may have nodded along with the scriptures that I read and said, yes, thus saith the

Lord. Surely there are not wolves in sheep's clothing who deny essential

Christian doctrines such as these, are there? Who denies that Jesus Christ is

God? Well, Bethel Church in Redding, California, under the teaching of Bill Johnson.

Bethel music is very popular for songs such as This is Amazing Grace and Reckless Love and Fall Afresh.

Bill Johnson teaches that Jesus was not God when he put on human flesh and dwelt among us.

Instead, Jesus was only human and he was a model of perfect humanity and we can do everything that Jesus did if we just have the same faith that he modeled.

Bethel Church claims to be able to heal the sick and raise the dead just like Jesus did, though they've never once produced a verified occurrence of such a miracle.

In fact, they've fallen flat on their face time and time again, and yet people continue to follow in their deceptive ways.

An article in the Sacramento Bee was published in March 10th of last year, right when the nation was going into lockdown over the

COVID pandemic, in which they said that Bethel Church had advised its faith healers to stay away from local hospitals.

If you can heal the sick and raise the dead, why are they telling their faith healers not to go into hospitals and heal the sick and raise the dead?

They shut down their healing rooms at Bethel Church to try to prevent the spread of COVID -19.

Why would they need to do that if they could heal the sick? By the way, Bill Johnson, Bethel's pastor, wears glasses and so does his wife.

Never trust a faith healer who wears glasses. Before this, in December of 2019, some of you may have heard this story.

Bethel Church spent six days in prayer and song hoping to raise to life a little two -year -old girl who had died unexpectedly.

She was the daughter of a couple of the worship leaders there at Bethel Church. It was absolutely heartbreaking to read about.

Did she rise from the dead? No. Because none of them have the power that they claim that they have.

And again, this comes from a false church who denies that there was anything divinely unique about Jesus that we ourselves are perfectly able to do all that He did.

They're heretics. Paula White Cain, Donald Trump's spiritual advisor, denied that Jesus Christ is the only begotten

Son of God. You are a son of God or a daughter of God.

You have the same priestly anointing that Jesus had, Paula will say. It's more common than you think, these teachers that will deny that Jesus Christ is

God incarnate. Thank you for listening to When We Understand the Text with Pastor Gabe Hughes.

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