Welcome to Delight in Grace, the teaching ministry of Rich Powell, pastor of Grace Bible Church in Winston-Salem. We can be easily deceived. Thankfully, 2 Peter 2, 10-16 lays out for us the character of false teachers. Pastor Rich unpacks how effectively the passage describes lying voices around us even today, and he warns us about the pitfalls we face when we entrust ourselves to lies. Let's listen in to this message titled, The Character of Liars.
This is part 3 of the message, which was first preached on September 10, 2023 at Grace Bible Church in Winston-Salem. The miraculous. Something is apparently miraculous, and wow, it works, and sometimes we're surprised that, hey, he said something and something seemed to happen, or he did something, or she did something and something seemed to happen. And they want you to believe that they have special abilities or a special connection with God of some sort. And we can be drawn in by something that seems to work.
Be very careful with that. Fourthly, they just simply entice by the persona of being successful, popular, celebrity. We are so drawn to celebrity, aren't we? We are. We ought not to be.
We are so drawn to it because we tend to give them an authority, an inappropriate authority in our lives because we idolize them. Let me quote from a great theologian in the New York magazine, Lady Gaga. She was interviewed, and she said this is, again, again, this is not a false teacher among you, say, she's not coming into the church, but is she? Is she on your musical repertoire?
I'm not condemning you. I'm just saying listen to how she thinks, okay? Listen to how she thinks. This is from an interview. These are her words, and I quote, what I've discovered is that in art, as in music, there's a lot of truth, and then there's a lie. The artist is essentially creating his work to make this lie a truth, but then he slides it in amongst all the others. The tiny little lie is the moment I live for, my moment. It's the moment the audience falls in love. Do you see the emotional manipulation there?
And music can do that. And so again I ask you, graciously, tenderly, lovingly, is this false teacher among you? We need to have discernment. This is what Peter is calling us to.
We need to live as people who remember. Let me just give you a warning, too, if I may, because there are some really, really good teachers out there who are very well known. I highly admired Tim Keller and his capacity to communicate. He was a gifted man in that arena, to communicate, to speak, and to write. Highly admire him.
I heard him live at the Basics Conference several years back. There are some other really, really good teachers who are faithful to the Word of God, but listen to me, please, do not idolize another man, because you will give them an authority in your life that they do not deserve, nor do they desire. And when you do that, then that person can do no wrong. And whatever they say, you're going to follow it hook, line, and sinker. And I agree with R.C. Sproul, every theologian is at best 80% right.
Problem is, I don't know which 20% I'm wrong on. That's why we need to hold the Word of God. We need to understand our theology, our doctrines. We need to hold them open-handed, but we can do it with confidence and conviction, but we also do it in a sense of community in the church so that we learn from each other. Do not idolize another teacher, please, or you will start falling into this trap that Peter is warning us about.
I don't care how good that teacher is, do not put them up on a pedestal that has an authority in your life beyond what they deserve or what has been entrusted them by God. Let's continue talking about how false teachers entice, sometimes, see this is number five, sometimes they entice with unique insight or knowledge. They claim to have unique insight or knowledge. They are the enlightened ones. They might be presenting a novel truth or a novel perspective. Boy, you know, they taught that, I've never seen that before, and it develops within you as a sense of you need them to be able to understand divine truth. Be careful of that. Sixth, I think it's sixth, number six, another way that they are is they're overtly pragmatic.
What I mean by that, well, they become pretty much like a self-help teacher, and it's all about you doing the right thing. Seven secrets, you notice I wrote a book, Seven Words That Can Change Your Life, right? Those are words of scripture, okay?
But you know, seven secret, if any title of a book that has secrets in it that you need to know, read it with a high degree of discernment. There's nothing new under the sun. Like I've said before, what I present here, there is nothing original coming from this pulpit. All we do is unpack the word of God, and there's nothing original there for me to come up with.
I can't improve on God's word. And the overly pragmatic false teachers, they can present like a wonderful self-help seminar with supernatural robes. So be careful with that. Be discerning about that. So when he says here that they entice, look at verse 14 with me, they entice unsteady souls.
We talked about how they entice. Now let's look at the unsteady souls. I'm going to teach you this morning how to be an unsteady soul. I'm not going to belabor this, I'm just going to go through it, but I want you to write it down, and I want you to contemplate this, because this is how you become an unsteady soul. Because if you'll remember, Peter is writing to believers, okay? And so are we to say, well, if you're a believer, you can't really be enticed, nuh-uh, you can.
You can be drawn away. Number one, to be an unsteady soul, Jesus Christ is preeminent only on Sundays. He does not apply to the rest of your week. Jesus Christ is preeminent only on Sundays.
I could teach a whole seminar on that, but not this morning. Number two, your faith is founded on coffee mug theology. Now listen, sometimes you can get some good theology on a coffee mug, okay? We've actually made them available here at Grace, but it's a whole list of things that God has done for us in Ephesians chapters one to three.
Those can't still be available, by the way, if you're interested in that, but that's from a while back. What do I mean by your faith founded on coffee mug theology? What I mean is you have a superficial knowledge of scripture that only addresses your felt needs. A superficial knowledge of scripture that only addresses your felt needs. You don't let the Bible identify your needs, you only go by what you feel.
Well, what does the Bible say about how I feel? And what that is, you remember the parable of the soils that Jesus gave? There's four soils. There's the hard path, and then there's the rocky, and then there's the thorny, and then there's the good soil.
The rocky and the thorny, the rocky, what is that? The seed doesn't penetrate deeply, and when the heat of the day comes up, the sun, when the heat comes in, okay, the seed can't take it. And this is what happens when you have a superficial knowledge of scripture that's just to meet your felt needs. When the heat comes, you can't handle it. Or the thorny soil. You're choked out by the cares of the world.
Why? Because you only have a superficial knowledge of scripture that meets your felt needs. How do we handle the scriptures? Like what Warren Wiersbe said, we can take, you know, coffee mug theology is you take a verse, you're flipping through and you're like, oh wow, that's a good verse, oh I love that verse. And you rip it right out of context, that verse makes me feel good.
And here's what Warren Wiersbe says, isolated texts apart from context become pretext. Sometimes coffee mug and bumper stick theology are all very much related to each other. So I challenge you this morning with your engagement of scripture. Don't let your faith be founded on coffee mug theology. Let the word of God identify your needs and meet them. Number three, some people may be really, really good at Bible study and deep Bible study and they know the scriptures well, but here's where this can be a problem. Number three, Bible study doesn't get beyond your intellect. Thanks for joining us here at Delight in Grace. You've been listening to Rich Powell, the lead pastor at Grace Bible Church in Winston Salem.
The Delight in Grace mission is to help you know that God designed you to realize your highest good and your deepest satisfaction in him, the one who is infinitely good. We hope you'll join us again on weekdays at 10 AM. We'll see you next week. We'll see you next week.
