In the Christian community there is an ongoing spiritual war. And in that
spiritual war there are terrorists trying to destroy Christianity from the
outside and from within. I'm not talking about someone physically trying to
blow up Churches but apostate teachers spreading false doctrine trying to
deceive Christians into believing things that aren't Biblical. John
MacArthur addresses this topic and we Christians need to heed what he has to
say.
May God bless,
Carl
my website -- http://www.nettally.com/saints/
my blog -- http://www.anniemayhem.com/cgi-bin/wordpress/
---
How To Identify Terrorists In The Church
by John MacArthur
Copyright 2007, Grace to You (http://www.gty.org/)
All rights reserved. Used by permission.
Jude 8
If you would open your Bible to the little epistle of Jude, the next to the
last book in the Bible, just before the book of Revelation. In our study of
Jude, we have sort of identified this epistle with the title of The War on
the Truth, fighting the war on the truth. It is drawn essentially out of
verse 3 where we are called to contend earnestly for the faith. And in our
study tonight, we're going to begin to look at verses 8 and following which
I will read in a few moments, after some introductory remarks.
We are literally day in and day out drowned by the media with images of
terrorism. Terrorists have the attention of all of us. They have the
attention of the world. You see it on television, you hear it on the radio,
you see images in the newspapers. Every time you travel anywhere, whether
you go by boat or plane or train, you're made very much aware of the careful
security because everyone is afraid of terrorists. They represent a new
kind of war and a very deadly kind of war, very different than conventional
war. And they are very, very effective. Our minds are literally filled
with the images of their destruction and death and the fear of people in the
wake of that kind of assault.
And what makes terrorists so dangerous and so deadly really comes down to
two things. One, they are not easily visible. They operate clandestinely.
They are hidden. They are unknown. They do not wear a uniform. We don't
know who they are. We don't know where they are. We don't know what they're
going to do or how they're going to do it or when they're going to do it.
We usually don't find this out until the deadly attack is already over.
The second thing that makes them so dangerous is they are willing to kill
themselves for their cause. This has escalated terrorism to a new level in
the world. There have always been terrorists but the new suicide bomber
takes it to another level because people who are willing to kill themselves
for their cause are not subject to any threat. They know no fear because no
legal recourse has any effect on them whatsoever. Protection from their
deadly activity depends on discerning who they are before they attack
because threatening them with something that we would do to them after the
attack means nothing to people who will gladly blow themselves up for their
cause. Unmasking terrorists then is critical. And the world is busily
engaged in this, hunting them out, doing everything we can with all of our
means to discover the terrorists before the terrorist acts. Our nation and
other nations in the western world are in a massive effort that is costing
uncounted billions of dollars, millions of man hours, to try to find the
terrorists before they act because by the time they act, it's too late. We
have to discover them, unmask them, expose them and therefore protect people
from them.
We understand that. We understand how important it is in this world and we
as Christians, I think, are particularly concerned about this because we
have a sense of what is right. We have a sense of righteousness and justice
and a hatred for war. And we certainly support our nation's effort to
engage in the war on terrorism because we know that Romans 13 says,
"Government exists to protect innocent people from those who would do them
harm." We understand that's a function of government. In fact, biblically
that's one of the very few legitimate functions of government. The
government bears the sword. That is to say God has given the government the
right to kill in order to protect life. And I watch as evangelicals become
very exercised over this and rightly so, how we will gladly proclaim our
support of the President, our support of the war on terror, we will rise up
in the name of righteousness and affirm the validity of this and the
necessity of this. Yet at the very same time, Christian people and the
evangelical church seems oblivious, unconcerned and indifferent to Satan's
Al Qaeda who have infiltrated the church with the objective of blowing it to
bits.
There is a spiritual war going on. There is a war going on inside the
church being waged in terrorist fashion because the enemy is disguised as an
angel of light, because he clothes himself in sheep's clothing. What makes
him so dangerous to the church is the same thing that makes terrorists
dangerous to our nation. One, we don't know who they are. And two, they
don't mind blowing themselves right into hell forever with their lies. They're
willing to be destroyed by their own bombs. And as I look at the
evangelical church, I see parts of the city of God smoldering in destruction
from the bombs of Satan's spiritual terrorists that have been planted here
and there to blow people to bits and to blow the terrorists themselves into
eternal hell as long as their targets in the church are destroyed. In fact,
having thought all of this through, every time I see an image of a
terrorist, it appears to me as a metaphor with what's going on in the
church. And frankly, the terrorists who are hidden in the church are far
more dangerous than the terrorists who are hidden in the neighborhoods of
America and other places in the world because those terrorists can only kill
the body, but the terrorists in the church destroy the truth and leave a
rubble of lies that damns men's souls.
If it is important for us to fight the war on terror politically, socially,
culturally, it is far more important for us to fight the war on terror
spiritually. And yet we're living in a time when evangelicalism is very
soft and very unconcerned and almost indifferent to what is going on in the
church. Those of us who are true believers have been called by Jude in that
third verse to earnestly contend for the faith, to get our focus on fighting
the battle to protect the church from the deceivers who attack the truth.
Verse 4 says, "They have crept in unnoticed," a classic terrorist tactic.
We don't know who they are at first. And verse 12 says, "They are hidden
reefs in your love feasts, they feast with you without fear." They're right
there and because they're undiscovered, they're rubbing elbows with us in
the church and they're fearless. It is not obvious to most who they are,
nor does it seem to be of much concern to most who they are. And because
they don't mind blowing themselves up with their own lies, blowing
themselves into eternal hell, they are deadly dangerous. They themselves,
according to verse 13, are headed for black darkness. They themselves,
according to verse 7, are headed for the punishment of eternal fire. It
doesn't seem to bother them.
And so, we are dealing with terrorism in the church. And when I say church,
I mean the broadest sense of Christendom, Christianity. I want you to hear
what Jude has to say in describing these terrorists, in unmasking these
apostate false teachers in the church. And I think it's very effective to
just listen to this text and I want to read it starting in verse 8 and I
want to read down to verse 16, just listen to how Jude describes them.
"Yet in the same manner, these men, also by dreaming, defile the flesh and
reject authority and revile angelic majesties. But Michael the archangel
when he disputed with the devil and argued about the body of Moses, did not
dare pronounce against him a railing judgment, but said, 'The Lord rebuke
you.' But these men revile the things which they do not understand; and the
things which they know by instinct, like unreasoning animals, by these
things they are destroyed. Woe to them! For they have gone the way of Cain
and for pay they have rushed headlong into the error of Balaam, and perished
in the rebellion of Korah. These men are those who are like hidden reefs in
your love feasts when they feast with you without fear, caring for
themselves; clouds without water, carried along by winds; autumn trees
without fruit, doubly dead, uprooted; wild waves of the sea, casting up
their own shame like foam; wandering stars, for whom the black darkness has
been reserved forever. And about these also Enoch, in the seventh
generation from Adam, prophesied saying, 'Behold, the Lord came with many
thousands of His holy ones to execute judgment upon all, and to convict all
the ungodly of all their ungodly deeds which they have done in an ungodly
way, and of all the harsh things which ungodly sinners have spoken against
Him.' These are grumblers, finding fault, following after their own lusts;
they speak arrogantly, flattering people for the sake of gaining an
advantage."
Quite a description, isn't it? Amazing description. Clear, extensive,
dramatic and frankly even startling and very parallel, by the way, to 2
Peter chapter 2...very parallel to 2 Peter chapter 2.
Now let me remind you that Jude is writing about apostate false teachers.
Apostasy, meaning to defect, to depart, to abandon. Apostasy is defecting
from the faith, hearing of the faith, knowing of the faith, knowing the true
gospel, hearing the true gospel, maybe professing even to believe the true
gospel, and then abandoning it. It is the most terrible of evils for which
the hottest hell is reserved. To be exposed to the gospel truth and to
reject it is to put yourself in the most severe place of eternal torment.
Now apostasy, or departing from the truth of God, departing from the gospel,
departing from what God has said and what God requires is not new. In
Deuteronomy 32:15 we read, "Israel forsook God who made him and scorned the
Rock of his salvation." Israel as a nation scorned the Rock of salvation.
Listen to 1 Chronicles 28:9, and David says to his son, Solomon, "Know the
God of your father and serve Him with a whole heart and a willing mind for
the Lord searches all hearts and understands every intent of the thoughts.
If you seek Him, He will let you find Him, but if you forsake Him, He will
reject you forever." A warning that David gives to Solomon about the deadly
danger of apostasy.
Listen to Jeremiah 17:5, "Thus says the Lord, 'Cursed is the man who trusts
in mankind and makes flesh his strength and whose heart turns away from the
Lord.'" Cursed is the man whose heart turns away from the Lord. In the
eighteenth chapter, there are a number of places in Ezekiel, but the
eighteenth chapter and verse 24, "When a righteous man turns away from his
righteousness, commits iniquity and does according to all the abominations
that a wicked man does, will he live? All his righteous deeds which he's
done will not be remembered for his treachery which he has committed and his
sin which he has committed, for them he will die." You may on the outside
attempt to live a righteous life. If you come to the place where you turn
away from that, all that righteousness is demonstrated to have been nothing
but superficial and you will die. The thirty-third chapter of Ezekiel
essentially says the same thing.
In John chapter 6, coming into the New Testament, we read about many of the
disciples who were with Jesus walking with Him no more, turning away. Like
branches described in John 15:6 who are cut off and thrown into the fire.
And Hebrews warns as we saw a couple of weeks ago, over and over and over
again not to neglect so great a salvation, not to have been brought all the
way to a full understanding of the gospel and to turn away and find it then
impossible to be renewed again unto repentance. And again not to trample
under your foot the gospel, the blood of the Covenant and thus bring upon
yourself the sorest or severest eternal judgment.
Apostasy then is identified throughout the Bible as a defection from the
truth, having heard it and known it and even professed perhaps to believe
it. It is willful rejection of the truth that is heard and known. The most
serious sin bringing the most severe eternal judgment.
Now of those who are apostate, Jude is addressing a certain segment. The
apostate false teachers, those who become the instruments of Satan and while
they have defected from the faith, they become deadly terrorists embedded in
the church. They're like the world of terrorists today. There are many
Muslims in the world, not all of them are embedded in society with the
purpose of massacring as many people as they can and blowing themselves up
in the process. And not all apostates remain in the church as terrorists,
the agents of Satan disguised as angels of light, but there are many, many,
many of them. Sometimes they're dressed in backwards collars. Sometimes
they're dressed in clerical robes. They're homosexual priests and lesbian
pastors and liberal preachers. Sometimes they wear a cardinal's hat or sit
on a Pope's throne. Sometimes they are the leader of a heretical sect.
Sometimes they are professors in a so-called Christian university or
seminary. Sometimes they are self-styled scholars writing on biblical
issues for national magazines. Sometimes they're debating me on television.
Sometimes they're TV preachers, television healers. These terrorists teach
lies and these terrorists bring destruction into the church. And these
terrorists blow up people's souls, as it were. They are the agents of Satan
in the church to corrupt and destroy.
Listen to 2 Peter chapter 2 verses 1 to 3. "False prophets also arose among
the people, just as there will be false teachers among you who will...and
here's the key...secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the
Master who bought them, bringing swift destruction upon themselves." They
come in with their heretical bombs and blow themselves up in the process
willingly. They are damned by their very own deceptions. Verse 2 says,
"Many will follow their sensuality and because of them the way of truth will
be maligned. In their greed they will exploit you with false words, their
judgment from long ago is not idle. Their destruction is not asleep."
Every time they're talked about in 2 Peter and Jude, the writers are quick
to add their own destruction is built into what they do. No, they're very
much like the terrorists. We don't know who they are, in many cases it
doesn't seem like people care and they willingly damn themselves in their
effort to damn others.
Second Peter deals with them and so does Jude. Second Peter very likely
written before Jude. Peter says they're coming, Jude says they're here.
Now in the words we read from verses 8 to 11, we have one of the really
great sections in all New Testament literature. In fact, going back to
verse 5 through verse 11 is a remarkably carefully crafted portion of
Scripture. Here we have the unmasking of the spiritual enemies of our Lord,
the spiritual enemies of the truth, the terrorists in the church, so
dangerous as to require such vivid and such pungent language and such severe
condemnation. And Jude is very, very structured here. In verses 5 through
7 you have three cases of apostate judgments. The first one in verse 5, the
second in verse 6, and the third in verse 7. And then in verses 8 to 10 you
have three characteristics of apostate nature. Three cases of apostate
judgment in verses 5 to 7, one on Israel, one on angels and one on Sodom and
Gomorrah. Then three characteristics of apostate nature, or disposition,
verses 8 to 10. They are immoral. They are insubordinate. And they are
irreverent. And then in verse 11 you have three comparisons of apostate
influence: Cain, Balaam and Korah. It is a very carefully crafted series of
threes...three threes. This indicates that the author has thought this out
and summarized it aptly for us to grasp and remember. These help us to
identify and unmask the apostates.
First, three cases of apostate judgment, verses 5 through 7. Let me just
read it as a review because we've already gone through it. "I desire to
remind you, though you know all things once for all, that the Lord after
saving a people out of the land of Egypt, subsequently destroyed those who
did not believe. And angels who did not keep their own domain, but
abandoned their proper abode, He has kept in eternal bonds, or chains, under
darkness for the judgment of the great day. Just as Sodom and Gomorrah and
the cities around them since they in the same way as the angels indulged in
gross immorality and went after strange flesh," and, of course, he's talking
about homosexuality, called Sodomy. "And they are exhibited as an example
in undergoing the punishment of eternal fire."
Jude says, first illustration is Israel. God delivered them out of Egypt
and then because they defected from Him, because they became immoral,
insubordinate and irreverent, as we will see, God destroyed them all in the
wilderness because of apostasy. And then the angels who dwelt with God in
the heaven of heavens rebelled, abandoned their proper abode. And as we
learned, came all the way down, once they became what we call demons, some
of them came down and cohabitated with the daughters of men, as recorded in
Genesis chapter 6, in one of the horrific expressions of the evil of the
world that God drowned in the Flood. Angels literally fallen angels,
possessing men and engaging with those men as spirit influences in marriage,
demon dominated, that so affected families and children as to make God drown
the world. And then there, of course, is Sodom and Gomorrah, the horrific
sin there where the homosexual passions ran so hot that the men of the city
tried to rape angels who came there to visit Lot. In each case there is
judgment.
Verse 5 says those in Israel were destroyed. Verse 6 says the angels are
kept in eternal bonds under darkness for the judgment of that great day.
And Sodom and Gomorrah is awaiting the punishment of eternal fire. They
were consumed by fire. They are now in burning torment and awaiting the
final hell and Lake of Fire to come at the end.
Jude establishes then this about apostates, whoever they are be they Jews,
be they angels, or be they Gentiles in Sodom and Gomorrah, apostasy receives
severe judgment. And he speaks about their destruction in verse 10 and he
speaks about it in verse 12 in the words "doubly dead and uprooted." He
speaks about it in verse 13 regarding the black darkness to which they are
reserved forever, and he spells it out specifically in verse 15, to execute
judgment upon all.
So, in helping us to understand apostasy, we begin with three cases of
apostate judgments. We come then to the second point, three characteristics
of apostate nature. And this is where we learn why God treats them the way
He does. This is where we learn why they will be judged. This is very
insightful. And I confess to you that I'm going to try to get you through
this with...and, you know, preaching is somewhat of an adventure for me,
too. I'm not sure what I'm going to say, I'm going to try to say it the
best way I can and the clearest way I can. This is very helpful if it's
understood. And I just pray the Lord will help me to help you to understand
what He's saying.
Look at verse 8, "Yet in the same manner...in the same manner, these
men...what men?...these men identified in verse 4, certain persons who have
crept in unnoticed, marked out for condemnation, ungodly persons who turn
the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord
Jesus Christ...these men against which you must contend for the faith once
for all delivered to the saints, these men..." And he says this little
phrase in English, "Yet in the same manner," it's one word in the Greek,
likewise. "Likewise these men."
What is this saying? This is a interpretive key. The word "likewise" is a
very important transition, it's an interpretive key, it unlocks the
understanding. Israel engaged in immorality. Do you remember that one?
When Moses came down from the mountain, they were engaged in immorality.
They engaged in insubordination, they did not obey the Word of God and they
murmured and complained against God. They engaged against irreverence,
worshiping an idol and violating the very command that God had given on the
mountain. The angels that fell engaged in immorality with the daughters of
men. The angels that fell certainly fell because of their insubordination.
They did not maintain their proper abode. They did not stay in the domain
where they were created. And angels as well engaged in irreverence, they
defied God led by Lucifer, they defied God, they would not give God the
honor and glory to which God is due. And Sodom and Gomorrah, yes they
engaged in immorality. Yes they were insubordinate to the truth of God that
had been told to them by Lot and the Law of God which had been written on
their hearts. They went against the Law of God in their hearts in their own
homosexuality. They went against what Lot had told them about the true God.
They engaged in horrific irreverence, even assaulting to rape holy angels
who had taken on human form. Likewise is the key that pulls all of that
right into the description of these men. "Likewise these men defile the
flesh, reject authority, and revile angelic majesties." And he pulls the
whole story of those three cases right into the discussion of the apostates.
Apostates are just like immoral, irreverent, insubordinate Israel, angels,
Sodom and Gomorrah. Apostates do the very same thing. They defile the
flesh, that's immorality. They reject authority, that's insubordination.
They revile angelic majesties, that's irreverence. And there are the three
characteristics of apostate nature. If you want to spot an apostate, look
for those three things. They have to be unmasked as to their morality.
They have to be unmasked as to their disobedience and rejection of the truth
of God, the Word of God. They have to be unmasked as to their irreverence.
And I am telling you, folks, those three tests will work every time...every
time. Israel, angels, Gentiles were marked by the very same three
characteristics. Immorality, insubordination and irreverence...you want
another word for irreverence? Blasphemy...blasphemy.
Now one other things strikes you, doesn't it, in that verse, verse 8?
"Likewise these men, these apostates, also by dreaming," did you look at
that and wonder what is that saying to us, by dreaming? Actually in the
Greek, houtoi(??) enupniazomenoi(??), big long word. It says this in the
Greek, "Likewise these dreamers," it categorically says that apostates are
dreamers, categorically they are dreamers.
What in the world is that saying? What do you mean they're dreamers? Well,
the normal word for dream is onar and it is used in the New Testament to
speak about a dream. But this very long word is not the normal word. In
fact, this word enupniazomenoi is a word used only one other place in the
New Testament and that one other place is in the book of Acts. Listen to
this, chapter 2 verse 17, and in Peter's sermon on the Day of Pentecost,
after the Spirit of God had come, and the people had heard the wonderful
works of God in their own language, you remember, because God gave them the
ability to speak in all different languages, Peter stands up and says, "Men
of Judea and all you who live in Jerusalem, be this known to you and give
heed to my words, these men are not drunk as you suppose, it's only the
third hour of the day...nine in the morning...what you just saw was spoken
of through the prophet Joel," and he quotes from Joel 2:28 and 29, this is
what Joel 2:28 and 29 says, "And it shall be in the last days...God says...I
will pour forth My Spirit upon all mankind and your sons and your daughters
shall prophesy and your young men shall see visions and your old men shall
dream dreams." And this is the word that's used here and only there. It's
not the normal word for dream.
It's a word in the New Testament associated with visions and prophecies. So
we say then it's selected because it refers to revelatory dreams, associated
with visions and prophecies. There may be some uses of it for dreams as
dreams, normal dreams. But the Holy Spirit was very careful to use this
word in a special way because it connected to those dreams which by the
prophecy of Joel and the affirmation of Peter have to do with revelation.
What it's saying is, in the future prophecy which is now ceased and
revelation which is now ceased and visions which have now ceased with the
completion of the New Testament will come back again in the glory of the
Kingdom and again there will be prophecy and again there will be visions and
again there will be revelatory dreams, that is God will reveal Himself not
only through visions and through prophecies when people are awake, but even
through dreams. And, you know, He did that in the Old Testament, didn't He?
Certainly Joseph is a great illustration of that.
So what we have here then at best is that false teachers, now follow this,
false teachers inevitably have to have a source for their deception. And
they have to have a source that's believable. They have to have a source
that has some authority, or that is convincing. So they can't just say, "I
think..." They can't just say, "I feel..." They can't just say, "We've got
a committee in our group and we came up with this deal." The really
effective false teachers and apostates will inevitably tell you God
communicates to them in secret ways, in their dreams, in their visions.
These are revelatory experiences. Apostate false teachers from Joseph Smith
to Benny Hinn and everybody in between claim that God speaks to them in
their dreams, in their visions. And this, of course, transcends the
necessity to be submissive to the Word of God which is not in their hearts
anyway. And it gives them the illusion of authority and God gets blamed for
all their aberrations. They reject the Word of God.
Now that is a fair way to interpret that. But even if you want to beg the
question of revelatory dreams here and go another direction, you could
interpret it this way, "Yet likewise these dreamers," and you could...we'll
come down from that lofty claim to revelatory dreams and you could come down
and say it this way, "What they teach is nothing but the figment of their
own...what?...imagination." That's all it is. It's not anything more than
that. And by the way, their own perverted, polluted, evil imaginations, and
it could well refer to that as well. The term is big enough to capture all
of it. These apostates with their evil corrupted minds who stay in the
church to destroy, these spiritual terrorists controlled by Satan have
nothing but perverted sensual ideas running around in their minds and they
become the authority for their own deceptions. At its simplest, they reject
the Word of God and base their lies on the musings of their own deluded
brains. At its highest, they claim God speaks to them and God told them and
God gave them the Book of Mormon and God gave them The Science and Health
and Key to the Scripture and God gave them the revelation that told them to
do this and to do that, and God spoke to them in a dream, a vision. But the
bottom line is, they are unwilling to bow completely to the authority of the
Word of God. They've rejected that. False teachers, as I said, have to
have a source for their deceptions.
Let me take you to the Old Testament for a minute. Deuteronomy 13, you
know, it's worth working our way through this carefully because the bottom
line is, this is very, very important. Patricia and I have been reading
with all of you through the Old Testament and admittedly we are a few days
behind because she asks so many questions. And we have a lot of fun digging
in to some of these things. But we were reading Deuteronomy 13 the other
day and this is...this struck me as such an important passage in this
regard, I wrote a note to myself. Look at chapter 13 verse 1, "If a prophet
or a dreamer of dreams," there you go. This was so commonly the claim that
false prophets made that God talked to them in a dream, that it was almost
synonymous with the false prophet. "If a prophet or a dreamer of dreams
arises among you and gives you a sign or a wonder, and the sign or the
wonder comes true concerning which he spoke to you." You know, Satan can
fabricate some things, can't he? "And it comes true to you, saying, 'Let us
go after other gods whom you have not known and let us serve them.'" False
prophets, apostates, terrorists in the camp always want to direct you away
from the truth and away from God because they're immoral and they're
insubordinate and they're irreverent. He says, "Even if the sign or the
wonder comes true," verse 3, "you shall not listen to the words of that
prophet or that dreamer of dreams for the Lord your God is testing you to
find out if you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your
soul." Wow, it's a test. You follow a false prophet, you follow a dreamer
of dreams and you have proven that you do not love the Lord your God with
all your heart and soul. Pretty strong, huh? Verse 4, "You shall follow
the Lord your God and fear Him...here we go...and you shall keep His
commandments, listen to His voice, serve Him and cling to Him," don't go
walking off with some dreamer. Verse 5 then goes back to the dreamer, "But
that prophet or that dreamer of dreams..." can you see this synonymous
character of those two? "That prophet or that dreamer of dreams, kill him."
That's right. "Kill him because he's counseled rebellion against the Lord
your God who brought you from the land of Egypt, redeemed you from the house
of slavery to seduce you from the way in which the Lord your God commanded
you to walk. Purge that evil one from among you."
I don't know how you can say that any stronger, do you? Any dreamer of
dreams, if anybody comes along and tells you God talked to him in a dream,
cling to the Word of God. Do not follow that dreamer.
Look at Jeremiah 23. I'm already getting frustrated because I'm not going
to be able to teach the rest of this next Sunday night because it's Easter
and we have a baptism. So I'm going to have to trust your memory to hold on
to some of this for another week. Jeremiah 23 is a chapter that pronounces
judgment on false shepherds. Verse 1, "Woe to the shepherds who are
destroying and scattering the sheep of my pastor...pasture, woe to the
spiritual terrorists, they've always been around, nothing new. Woe to them,
you've scattered my flock, you've driven them away, you've not attended to
them. But I'm about to tend to you." Go down to verse 23, "Am I a God who's
near?, declares the Lord, and not a God far off? Can a man hide himself in
hiding places so I do not see him?, declares the Lord. Do not I fill the
heavens and the earth?, declares the Lord." He's saying, "Look, I know what's
going on, you might think you're hidden in the love feast, you might think
you've crept in unnoticed." Verse 25, "I have heard what the prophets have
said who prophesy in My name." And what do they say? "I had...what?...I
had a dream, I had a dream." How long, God says, how long is there anything
in the hearts of the prophets who prophesy falsehood? Even these prophets
of the deception of their own heart, it is nothing but the wicked musings of
their own depraved heart. And they claim to have had a dream in which God
has revealed this to them. All they want to do, verse 27 says, is make My
people forget My name by their dreams. "The prophet who has a dream may
relate his dream, but let him who has My Word speak My Word in truth." Don't
be listening to anybody who's telling you God talked to him in a dream. You
listen to those who teach you the Word of God.
The New Testament warns us about this in Colossians chapter 2 in verse 18.
This kind of expands it a little bit. Christians get suckered by these
people, they lead real Christians astray, no question. And here's a
warning. Verse 18, Colossians 2, "Let no one keep defrauding you of your
prize." Literally, "Stealing your eternal reward by delighting in
self-abasement and the worship of the angels, taking his stand on visions he
has seen." Boy, I'm telling you, when somebody says they have a vision, I
write them off right now. That's the end. There is a liar and a deceiver.
Because of people who make such claims, Christians are led astray. We are
warned again and again about that. They lead people astray. And 1 Timothy
4 says, "The Spirit expressly says in the latter times some will fall away
from the faith because they pay attention to deceitful spirits and doctrines
of demons by means of the hypocrisy of liars who are seared in their
conscience." They are unconscionable liars. Beware of those people who are
dreamers, either they're telling you God is speaking in their dreams, or
they're concocting out of their own minds their own view of everything.
I always think of that priest who said, "Well, my Jesus loves everybody."
And off the air I said, "You don't have your Jesus, He's not yours and you
can't make Him into what you want Him to be. He is who He is. It doesn't
matter what you think. It doesn't matter what anybody thinks"
I was reading in the paper today about the fact that a jury in the Methodist
church fully acquitted a lesbian minister. They did this because they
wanted to maintain the love of the Christian church. Their opinion is that
when the Bible speaks against that sin, it's not from God and it's not
authoritative. They have another view that's come out of their own
imagination.
Inevitably these dreamers, we'll go back to Jude, inevitably these dreamers
are immoral, insubordinate and irreverent. Now let me hasten to say, not
all the poor, witless people who may be true Christians who follow along
after them are the same as they are. They are...they're being taken, they're
being had, they're being made merchandise of. But inevitably though not
always public visible, these people are immoral and they are insubordinate
to the Word of God and they are irreverent, blasphemous. They may cover it
up and you may never know them. It's not like it used to be in the world.
If you heard somebody speak, you were there and you heard them and they
maybe lived in your community and you knew the reality of their lives. But
now they're in a box or on a radio or in a book and you don't know anything
about their life. Somebody does and those who do know these are
characteristics.
Let's spread that out, those three things. Those are the three
characteristics of the disposition or the nature. Look at characteristic
number 1, back to Jude verse 8, "These dreamers defile the flesh." Flesh
means here the body, physical body. It's not talking about the essence of
depravity in Romans 7, you can't defile that , it's already defiled. This
is talking about sarx, the actual body. And the word defiled is from a verb
miaino, it means to stain, to dye something, like you dye clothing,
material. It means to pollute, it means to corrupt. And when you link
staining, polluting, corrupting with the word sarx, or flesh, it speaks of
sexual sin and immorality. Apostate false teachers are inevitably immoral.
It may not be publicly visible, because they cover it up. But the
corruption is unrestrained, it has to be because they have abandoned the
truth. Verse 19 says, and this is very noteworthy, "They are devoid of the
Spirit...they are devoid of the Spirit." They do not have the Holy Spirit,
therefore there is no divine power to restrain their flesh. Apostate false
teachers are immoral, at heart and in conduct. There is no work of
regeneration and there is no work of sanctification in those who are devoid
of the Holy Spirit. They may claim to be virtuous, they may claim to be
righteous. They may wear t he clerical garb. They may take the title of
priest or minister or preacher or whatever. But they love lust, they love
darkness, Jesus said, rather than light because their deeds are evil, John
3. They're soiled, they're polluted. They're like Israel, committing
adultery at the foot of Mount Sinai. They're like the angels, coming down,
taking human form and cohabitating with women, leaving their own appropriate
estate. They're like Sodom and Gomorrah and the homosexuality there. They
may mask it for a while, but they are immoral.
Second Peter chapter 2, and by the way, we're never shocked when the scandal
finally breaks, are we? I think about this when I see these people on the
television, when I look at liberal theologians, when I look at the
scandalous activities in the Catholic priesthood, I look at the way these
people conduct themselves, my heart goes out to them because they have no
ability to restrain the flesh. On the other hand, they're deadly dangerous.
But in 2 Peter 2:10 it says of them, "They indulge the flesh in its corrupt
desires." They indulge the flesh in its corrupt desires. And Peter doesn't
just say that. Down in verse 18 of 2 Peter 2 he says, "They entice by
fleshly desires, by sensuality." I mean, this is the way they are
described. They are immoral, inside and outside. And eventually they are
revealed to be so. I've said through the years, time and truth go hand in
hand. Given enough time, the truth comes out. They are of the flesh, and
so they do the deeds of the flesh.
And do you remember what Galatians 5 says? "The deeds of the flesh are
immorality...first one...impurity, sensuality," first three. That's where
it all starts. It was for immorality that Israel was left in the
wilderness. It was for immorality that the angels were bound in chains. It
was for immorality that Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed.
Second, they reject authority...they reject authority. Obviously if you're
going to live an immoral life and love your lust and love your sin, you're
going to have to reject authority, that is divine authority. This is very
interesting. They reject authority, verse 8, reject is atheteo, to do away
with something that is established, that is to say they reject the
established authority. The word authority, this is very interesting,
kurioteta(?), in the Greek, related to the word kurios. Does anybody
remember what kurios means? Lord, they reject lordship. They reject
lordship. They reject any rule over them. It is even a word used of angels
in Ephesians 1:21 and Colossians 1:16, angels are called authorities,
rulers. But this isn't about angels. They reject singular authority. They
reject lordship. And we know exactly what lordship they're talking about
because we went back to verse 4, right? "They deny our only Master and Lord
Jesus Christ." They will not come under the authority of the Lord Jesus
Christ. They are their own self-styled authorities. This is arrogance,
this is arrogant reaction to God's rule and authority and the lordship of
Christ over His church.
As a...as a Christian, I am not against my will bound to the authority of
Christ. I am blessed and delighted and joyously committed to the lordship
of Christ as my greatest desire. These people are not. They do not submit
to Christ's revealed lordship, revealed through Scripture. But rather they
have their own theology and their own views, spun out of their own dreams,
their own imagination. This is so arrogant. Every time I hear some liberal
say the Bible isn't true, Jesus isn't who He said He was, didn't do what He
said He did, and spout some ridiculous opinion of his own, I'm reminded how
they reject lordship. Israel rebelled against Christ because Christ was the
rock in the wilderness, 1 Corinthians 10 says that. The angels rebelled
against the Lord Christ who was the Lord of heaven. Sodom and Gomorrah
rebelled against the divine sovereign of heaven who shares His rule with His
eternal Son, according to John 5. It's nothing new to reject lordship.
Israel had contempt for God's rule. They complained, they murmured, they
disobeyed, they sinned and they worshiped an idol. Angels had contempt for
God's rule. Satan and his followers mutinied in an effort to dethrone the
holy sovereign. Sodom and Gomorrah had contempt for the true Law of God and
the true God. And immorality and insubordination always go together, don't
they? Because if you're a subordinate to the Word of God and the authority
of God, and you submit to the lordship of Christ, then you're not going to
be immoral because you're going to do what He tells you to do. The false
teachers are like the scribes and Pharisees in Matthew 23, on the outside
they're painted white, on the inside they stink, they're full of dead men's
bones.
This issue of lordship, as you know, and I don't want to get too carried
away with this, but I have been fighting on this front for many, many
years...for many, many years I have tried to uphold the fact that Jesus is
Lord in the church. And it's relentless. You would think that sort of a
given, wouldn't you? Since you can't be a Christian unless you confess
Jesus as Lord, Romans 10. But for decades I have tried to uphold the
Lordship of Christ against its detractors in the church. And not all of
them apostates, some of them Christians led astray. And the battle still
goes on today. I wrote a book, The Gospel According to Jesus, a book on His
lordship. I wrote another book, The Gospel According to the Apostles,
another book on His lordship. Basically, every book I write signals the
lordship of Christ because it brings to bear upon the church what Christ has
said. Once when we started this battle for protecting the lordship of
Christ, the argument was, "Well, you know, if you just ask Jesus to save you
from your sin, you don't have to believe He's Lord, you don't have to make
Him Lord. You don't have to confess Him as Lord. He doesn't ask that.
That's asking too much. That would be a work."
And a lot of good Christian people bought into that. And I was so
suspicious of that, I want to go to the core of where that was coming from
because that smacked, that theology to me was a theology invented by
antinomians who wanted to accommodate their sin and who wanted a Jesus who
didn't put any pressure on them. I dug into it. There were two particular
sources of that here in America, one at a Bible college in Florida and the
leader of that was an avid exponent of this. And as it turned out, he was
having illicit relationships with female students for years. Well sure, if
you're going to do that, you don't need Jesus to be Lord, you don't want to
put that intimidation on your back. And the other was a very popular pastor
here in Southern California who was the leading advocate on that and with
whom I discussed it numerous time and interacted on many, many occasions and
found out that he had been engaged in the most wretched kind of relationship
with the young daughter of missionaries for 17 years in a deviant sexual
relationship.
If you're going to live an immoral life, you're going to have to find a
false doctrine to salve your conscience. And so, inevitably those people
who are apostate are immoral and insubordinate to the Word of God because
the two go together, right? Because immorality is disobedience. So the lie
that Jesus is not Lord is a comfortable lie for immoral people who reject
biblical authority and want to feel better about their sin. And, of course,
that fits the modern liberals and fits the phony-baloney preachers who live
immoral lies. It also bothers me, and this is just a footnote, that fewer
people today would say that they don't believe Jesus has to be Lord, they
don't believe in lordship salvation. People say, "Oh yes, He's Lord, but
pragmatic, seeker-friendly survey market-driven churches live as if He's not
the Lord of that church because they replaced the truth of Scripture with
the wisdom of men. That's another subject.
Let me mention the third, and I'll stop. We won't go into it because it's
rather lengthy. Third in the list of characteristics, they revile angelic
majesties. Revile is the word, are you ready for this, blasphemeo, they
blaspheme, present tense. They blaspheme. They blaspheme. And in that
little interesting phrase "angelic majesties," that's strange, isn't it? It's
even stranger if you knew the Greek. The Greek is doxas from which we get
doxology, it's a word that means glory. They blaspheme glories. And it
could refer to the glories of God, it could refer to the glories of Christ.
It could refer to the glories of divine truth. But I'll tell you this, the
word "blaspheme" is clear enough in its intention to be identified with
anything that is holy, or sacred. To blaspheme is to basically curse what
is sacred. They're irreverent. I get sometimes squeamish when I hear
certain so-called clerics or biblical scholars talk about Jesus in a
blasphemous fashion. I literally feel sick when I see Jesus misrepresented
in some stupid fashion in a ridiculous movie which takes away His glory.
These people who claim to represent Christ and claim to be the scholars of
the New Testament who are going to help us find the real Jesus, are really
blasphemers. Certainly the angels did that. They blasphemed the glories of
heaven. Certainly Sodom and Gomorrah did that, they blasphemed the very
holy angels. Certainly Israel did that, they blasphemed God when they made
that idol and worshiped it. Very serious.
But there's more to this. I 'm going to leave you with this, the
translation of glories, doxas as angelic majesties is the right translation
and I know a secret that you don't know. Why it's the right translation.
It is absolutely the right translation. And what it's talking about here is
how false teachers and apostates blaspheme angels and they do. And if you
come back in two weeks, I'm going to tell you how. Sorry, but I need to
hook you. Is that helpful? I hope it was. All right, let's have a word of
prayer.
Lord, this is...this is just so important for us. We just grieve over the
rubble in the church, over the immorality and the insubordination and the
irreverence by those who claim to represent you. Help us to be discerning
and faithful and arm us to be effective in earnestly contending for the
faith. We love You, we long to serve You effectively and these things we
ask with great gratitude and everyone said. Amen.
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