-3-
Recognising Apostates
Truth is essential. Jesus is the ultimate characterization of Truth. (He is the Way, the Truth, the Life) Truth sets us free. Truth is black and white. Real truth is God’s truth. There is no such thing as my truth and your truth. Our lives are based on truth if we are based on Jesus, because He is truth.
The truth is under attack. It is attacked, first of all, from outside the church.
The enemies of God systematically and determinedly work at removing the truth of God that leads to eternal life, from the society in which we live. If they can present a believable, educated and scientific worldview without God in it, it affects even believers who live and function in this world. When we hear it day after day it has an effect. The greater the so-called scientific explanations of life as we know it, the smaller our God becomes.
If we believe so-called science, explaining away every miracle and event for which we have no answer, the result is spiritual anemia. As we lean more and more heavily upon ‘scientific evidence’ we depend less and less on the written Word. This can lead extreme spiritual weakness and ultimately to spiritual death.
That is, spiritual weakness can progress to a place of unbelief and rejection of seeing Jesus as the divine Son of God. If and when that happens, spiritual death occurs.
In any country where evangelical, conservative, Christianity has to function underground, the outside threat and attack against Truth can be minimal.
In such cases Satan’s attacks will be most effective if he can infiltrate the church so as to attack from the inside.
In our country, Canada, we have both. Attacks from the scientific community, and from institutes of higher learning (the outside) and also from false gospel information being taught from the inside.
The information that comes to us from schools, universities and other sources has much too great a hold on believers.
And it starts at an early age. We send our children to school, expect them to pay attention to what they are being told, and to get good grades … but all the while they are being given a worldview that very convincingly has no personal God in it. Judaism and Christianity (Old and New Testaments) are categorized as mythology.
Many Christians who have opted to become public school teachers have been inundated with a worldview that is anti-God and many have come to the point where they feel they have to merge the two belief systems together. Why? Because they feel the scientific evidence is, for the most part, authentic and overwhelming. In their heart of hearts, they are aware that they no longer can simply believe what the Bible teaches about … any topic really.
They cannot take the account of creation literally. It must be rationalized in such a way so that the theory of evolution can be taught as fact.
How do you get two diametrically opposed worldviews merged into one? It is possible by changing what the Bible clearly and plainly says. Changing it into something else, for instance, by saying that it was written for simple and ignorant people of the day. It becomes treated as a ‘story’ that was befitting the people of the day. But now that we are a generation of people that have access to scientific fact, the simple story of creation just cannot not be taken literally.
The Bible, God’s word is a wealth of information. It is accurate and as up-to-date, (as someone has said) as tomorrow’s headlines. Paul cautioned Timothy, however, that the Word of God must be ‘correctly divided’. Much incorrect teaching of God’s word takes place when we fail to do that.
I remember a little Sunday school chorus that we sang as kids’
Every promise in the book is mine,
Every chapter, every verse, every line ..
But that is simply not so. Every promise in the book is not mine. The Word must be correctly divided or we will find ourselves teaching things that are not true. Here is a quick example. This is a very familiar passage; if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land. 2Chronicles 7:14
When God’s people humble themselves, pray, seek His face, turn from sin … that is a good thing. And when we do that, we can expect the blessing of God on our lives. But … we cannot expect God to heal the land in which we live. That is a mis-application of scripture. Christians do not have a physical land. Israel did … and does to this day. But Christians do not. Our country, our land is heaven. Our citizenship is in heaven. There does not exist categories of people who will surround the throne of God in heaven and be identified as Canadian Christians, American Christians or British Christians. There will be no such distinction. As a matter of fact there will not be separate groups who could identify themselves as Baptist Christians, Methodist Christians, Pentecostal Christians. No, all present day distinguishing marks are temporary at best.
The above passage of scripture applies totally to Israel only, and for us to ‘claim this promise’ is simply incorrect. It is a matter of dividing truth correctly. This verse applies to Israel … that is a proper division.
So we can end up with bad or faulty teaching in our churches by being ignorant regarding how to divide the application of scripture, or by listening to teaching that is claimed to be more intellectually correct. Bible scholars can get to the place that they are ...“Ever learning but never coming to the knowledge of the truth.” (2 Timothy 3:7)
The dangerous result is a weakened view of ‘Truth’. If the Bible account of creation is just a story for the people of the time, so too then, can every other part of scripture be taken ‘with a grain of salt’ because it was written for simple and uneducated people of the day.
After some educators of the Word get finished analysing scripture, they end up having a form of godliness but denying its power. And from such people turn away! 2Timothy 3:5
Paul warned Timothy with these words … O Timothy, guard the deposit entrusted to you. Avoid irreverent babble and contradictions of what is falsely called “knowledge”, for by professing it some have swerved from the faith. (I Timothy 6:20 ESV)
God entrusts us with His word. It is to be guarded. Certain people get ahold of it, study about it instead of actually studying it, and come up with ‘knowledge’ that they write about, lecture about and debate about … but their knowledge is off. Paul calls it false knowledge. He says that some have ‘professed it’. That is why teachers in universities and seminaries are called ‘professors’. They have knowledge to offer. Paul warns Timothy to watch out for professors who are pushing false truth.
It is this serious situation that Jude is addressing. He says that we are in a war. Truth is being attacked. As such, eternal life is being missed and people are headed for hell. And it is all unnecessary … if we would only fight to keep the truth pure and protected.
Truth is under attack in our schools and universities and it affects Christian teachers and professors and leads to a gospel with no power to give life .
And Truth is under attack also from within the church. We are given predictions and warnings that the truth attackers are coming. Peter said they were coming in the last days. Jude says that they have arrived. Jesus said that they would be Wolves dressed as Sheep.
These need to be exposed. How can we do that? Who are these attackers? And, if I were to name them … how do we ‘take them out’?
Actually we don’t need to take them out. They are not OUR enemy. God will take care of them.
God does that. More about that in a future chapter
Rather than name them, I think we should identify the false teachings that are replacing Truth.
4. For certain people have crept in unnoticed who long ago were designated for this condemnation, ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.
Their doctrine is deadly. They sound biblically educated. We could say that they have a form of godliness but there is no actual life changing power. There is no conversion. The gospel is reduced and simplified.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the great German pastor, theologian, martyr, spy was asked in 1943 how it was possible for the Church to sit back and let Hitler seize absolute power. His firm answer: "It was the teaching of cheap grace."
"Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ." - Dietrich Bonhoeffer
We live in a time and culture that not only teaches cheap grace but praises it.
(Copied from a post by my wife, Mary)
Cheap grace does not produce born again people. It produces followers who fall away at the first signs of a call for commitment, followers who fall away when the interests and obligations of the world squeeze out belief and faith.
These enemies of truth of which Jude is speaking pervert the grace of our God into sensuality. Sensuality means the enjoyment, expression, or pursuit of physical pleasure.
Be honest, we all like this to a degree, right? But when preachers stand in front of a crowd and emphasize enjoyment, self-expression and physical pleasure as a result of having a God who loves us so much, they are leading people away from Christ. They teach license. In other words, you can do anything you want. God saved you by grace, not works, so you are free to fulfill your pleasures. God wants you healthy, wealthy and wise!
Thousands upon thousands of Christians have fallen for this kind of a gospel. And that is because it is so appealing. It sounds so good. It is what we really wanted to hear.
The apostle Paul said this, For there will be a time when people will not tolerate sound teaching. Instead, following their own desires, they will accumulate teachers for themselves, because they have an insatiable curiosity to hear new things. 2 Timothy 4:3 (New English Translation)
That time is here and it has been here since the late 60’s. The church has taken a huge hit. We are in the generation of the great apostasy. It is so easy to see that many Christians follow their own desires.
They will accumulate teachers for themselves, who will tell them what they want to hear. And they want to hear things that will not call them to accountability, they don’t want to hear about a close walk with Jesus, they don’t want to hear a call to a commitment of Bible study. They want to hear things that make them feel good. So they find a teacher that fills their desires.
Jude sees that there is no hope for these teachers. He does not suggest praying for them.
So how do we expose them? How do we stand up against them? Here is the plan. We don’t. We leave that up to God. But here is what we can and must do:
First of all, be true to the Scripture. know your Bible and be faithful to it.
Secondly, support faithful pastors and teachers who honor the truth without compromise.
Then thirdly, give an unflinching witness to the truth of God’s Word; Live it and proclaim it. And do everything you can to make possible the training of more faithful warriors for the truth.
We are told to earnestly contend for the truth. We see that enemies to the truth are here. They are ‘outside the church’ in areas of higher education and in our public schools. They are passing themselves off as evangelists and pastors who have a better gospel.
Their gospel only salves the conscience and does not save the soul. They do preach repentance, sorrow and confession of sin. They do not advise seekers to ‘count the cost’ before making their decision.
The bottom line of their preaching is, they deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.
In the next section ‘What is God really like?’
The truth is under attack. It is attacked, first of all, from outside the church.
The enemies of God systematically and determinedly work at removing the truth of God that leads to eternal life, from the society in which we live. If they can present a believable, educated and scientific worldview without God in it, it affects even believers who live and function in this world. When we hear it day after day it has an effect. The greater the so-called scientific explanations of life as we know it, the smaller our God becomes.
If we believe so-called science, explaining away every miracle and event for which we have no answer, the result is spiritual anemia. As we lean more and more heavily upon ‘scientific evidence’ we depend less and less on the written Word. This can lead extreme spiritual weakness and ultimately to spiritual death.
That is, spiritual weakness can progress to a place of unbelief and rejection of seeing Jesus as the divine Son of God. If and when that happens, spiritual death occurs.
In any country where evangelical, conservative, Christianity has to function underground, the outside threat and attack against Truth can be minimal.
In such cases Satan’s attacks will be most effective if he can infiltrate the church so as to attack from the inside.
In our country, Canada, we have both. Attacks from the scientific community, and from institutes of higher learning (the outside) and also from false gospel information being taught from the inside.
The information that comes to us from schools, universities and other sources has much too great a hold on believers.
And it starts at an early age. We send our children to school, expect them to pay attention to what they are being told, and to get good grades … but all the while they are being given a worldview that very convincingly has no personal God in it. Judaism and Christianity (Old and New Testaments) are categorized as mythology.
Many Christians who have opted to become public school teachers have been inundated with a worldview that is anti-God and many have come to the point where they feel they have to merge the two belief systems together. Why? Because they feel the scientific evidence is, for the most part, authentic and overwhelming. In their heart of hearts, they are aware that they no longer can simply believe what the Bible teaches about … any topic really.
They cannot take the account of creation literally. It must be rationalized in such a way so that the theory of evolution can be taught as fact.
How do you get two diametrically opposed worldviews merged into one? It is possible by changing what the Bible clearly and plainly says. Changing it into something else, for instance, by saying that it was written for simple and ignorant people of the day. It becomes treated as a ‘story’ that was befitting the people of the day. But now that we are a generation of people that have access to scientific fact, the simple story of creation just cannot not be taken literally.
The Bible, God’s word is a wealth of information. It is accurate and as up-to-date, (as someone has said) as tomorrow’s headlines. Paul cautioned Timothy, however, that the Word of God must be ‘correctly divided’. Much incorrect teaching of God’s word takes place when we fail to do that.
I remember a little Sunday school chorus that we sang as kids’
Every promise in the book is mine,
Every chapter, every verse, every line ..
But that is simply not so. Every promise in the book is not mine. The Word must be correctly divided or we will find ourselves teaching things that are not true. Here is a quick example. This is a very familiar passage; if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land. 2Chronicles 7:14
When God’s people humble themselves, pray, seek His face, turn from sin … that is a good thing. And when we do that, we can expect the blessing of God on our lives. But … we cannot expect God to heal the land in which we live. That is a mis-application of scripture. Christians do not have a physical land. Israel did … and does to this day. But Christians do not. Our country, our land is heaven. Our citizenship is in heaven. There does not exist categories of people who will surround the throne of God in heaven and be identified as Canadian Christians, American Christians or British Christians. There will be no such distinction. As a matter of fact there will not be separate groups who could identify themselves as Baptist Christians, Methodist Christians, Pentecostal Christians. No, all present day distinguishing marks are temporary at best.
The above passage of scripture applies totally to Israel only, and for us to ‘claim this promise’ is simply incorrect. It is a matter of dividing truth correctly. This verse applies to Israel … that is a proper division.
So we can end up with bad or faulty teaching in our churches by being ignorant regarding how to divide the application of scripture, or by listening to teaching that is claimed to be more intellectually correct. Bible scholars can get to the place that they are ...“Ever learning but never coming to the knowledge of the truth.” (2 Timothy 3:7)
The dangerous result is a weakened view of ‘Truth’. If the Bible account of creation is just a story for the people of the time, so too then, can every other part of scripture be taken ‘with a grain of salt’ because it was written for simple and uneducated people of the day.
After some educators of the Word get finished analysing scripture, they end up having a form of godliness but denying its power. And from such people turn away! 2Timothy 3:5
Paul warned Timothy with these words … O Timothy, guard the deposit entrusted to you. Avoid irreverent babble and contradictions of what is falsely called “knowledge”, for by professing it some have swerved from the faith. (I Timothy 6:20 ESV)
God entrusts us with His word. It is to be guarded. Certain people get ahold of it, study about it instead of actually studying it, and come up with ‘knowledge’ that they write about, lecture about and debate about … but their knowledge is off. Paul calls it false knowledge. He says that some have ‘professed it’. That is why teachers in universities and seminaries are called ‘professors’. They have knowledge to offer. Paul warns Timothy to watch out for professors who are pushing false truth.
It is this serious situation that Jude is addressing. He says that we are in a war. Truth is being attacked. As such, eternal life is being missed and people are headed for hell. And it is all unnecessary … if we would only fight to keep the truth pure and protected.
Truth is under attack in our schools and universities and it affects Christian teachers and professors and leads to a gospel with no power to give life .
And Truth is under attack also from within the church. We are given predictions and warnings that the truth attackers are coming. Peter said they were coming in the last days. Jude says that they have arrived. Jesus said that they would be Wolves dressed as Sheep.
These need to be exposed. How can we do that? Who are these attackers? And, if I were to name them … how do we ‘take them out’?
Actually we don’t need to take them out. They are not OUR enemy. God will take care of them.
God does that. More about that in a future chapter
Rather than name them, I think we should identify the false teachings that are replacing Truth.
4. For certain people have crept in unnoticed who long ago were designated for this condemnation, ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.
Their doctrine is deadly. They sound biblically educated. We could say that they have a form of godliness but there is no actual life changing power. There is no conversion. The gospel is reduced and simplified.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the great German pastor, theologian, martyr, spy was asked in 1943 how it was possible for the Church to sit back and let Hitler seize absolute power. His firm answer: "It was the teaching of cheap grace."
"Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ." - Dietrich Bonhoeffer
We live in a time and culture that not only teaches cheap grace but praises it.
(Copied from a post by my wife, Mary)
Cheap grace does not produce born again people. It produces followers who fall away at the first signs of a call for commitment, followers who fall away when the interests and obligations of the world squeeze out belief and faith.
These enemies of truth of which Jude is speaking pervert the grace of our God into sensuality. Sensuality means the enjoyment, expression, or pursuit of physical pleasure.
Be honest, we all like this to a degree, right? But when preachers stand in front of a crowd and emphasize enjoyment, self-expression and physical pleasure as a result of having a God who loves us so much, they are leading people away from Christ. They teach license. In other words, you can do anything you want. God saved you by grace, not works, so you are free to fulfill your pleasures. God wants you healthy, wealthy and wise!
Thousands upon thousands of Christians have fallen for this kind of a gospel. And that is because it is so appealing. It sounds so good. It is what we really wanted to hear.
The apostle Paul said this, For there will be a time when people will not tolerate sound teaching. Instead, following their own desires, they will accumulate teachers for themselves, because they have an insatiable curiosity to hear new things. 2 Timothy 4:3 (New English Translation)
That time is here and it has been here since the late 60’s. The church has taken a huge hit. We are in the generation of the great apostasy. It is so easy to see that many Christians follow their own desires.
They will accumulate teachers for themselves, who will tell them what they want to hear. And they want to hear things that will not call them to accountability, they don’t want to hear about a close walk with Jesus, they don’t want to hear a call to a commitment of Bible study. They want to hear things that make them feel good. So they find a teacher that fills their desires.
Jude sees that there is no hope for these teachers. He does not suggest praying for them.
So how do we expose them? How do we stand up against them? Here is the plan. We don’t. We leave that up to God. But here is what we can and must do:
First of all, be true to the Scripture. know your Bible and be faithful to it.
Secondly, support faithful pastors and teachers who honor the truth without compromise.
Then thirdly, give an unflinching witness to the truth of God’s Word; Live it and proclaim it. And do everything you can to make possible the training of more faithful warriors for the truth.
We are told to earnestly contend for the truth. We see that enemies to the truth are here. They are ‘outside the church’ in areas of higher education and in our public schools. They are passing themselves off as evangelists and pastors who have a better gospel.
Their gospel only salves the conscience and does not save the soul. They do preach repentance, sorrow and confession of sin. They do not advise seekers to ‘count the cost’ before making their decision.
The bottom line of their preaching is, they deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.
In the next section ‘What is God really like?’