A Right View of False Religion #1

Welcome to the Truth Pulpit with Don Green, Founding Pastor of Truth Community Church in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Hello, I'm Bill Wright. Thanks for joining us as we continue teaching God's people God's Word. Don begins a new message today, so without further delay, let's join him right now in the Truth Pulpit. Well, as you know, we have spent a number of messages and weeks even in Matthew 7 dealing with the matter of false teachers and the narrow way to salvation and things of that matter. Let me pause for a moment to see how we could identify true teachers and false teachers, and it raises a question whether it's really worth the effort to sort out all of these competing truth claims that are in the world all about us. There would be many who would invite us and call us and even demand that we call a ceasefire on theological disputes and simply say that all paths lead to God.

But that superficial attitude is not an option for true Christians. We need a discernment and a right view of false religion to understand and assess the stakes that are at place when competing truth claims collide with one another. And we're starting a series, I guess I should say, that I'm going to do on Tuesday nights for the month of February. I'll be away next Tuesday is the plan, but for the rest of the month, a series titled Unmasking False Religion. And I just kind of see this as a bit of a thematic opportunity to pull together some scripture from different places to be able to have a fundamental framework to assess false religion and to think rightly about it.

And I think that we should start here with a very basic premise. God, as the God of the universe and the God of truth, God has the right, he has the prerogative to require us to worship as he sees fit. And God is who he actually is. And that means that we're not free to construct an idea of God, of our own liking, and to ascribe honor and worship to a creation of our own mind.

That's nothing more than idolatry. So we want to consider false religion. And I need to make it clear exactly what we're doing here tonight, because for this brief series, we're not looking at specific religions to evaluate their doctrines. We're not going to look at Mormonism or Jehovah's Witnesses or things like that. We're not looking at specific religions with a narrow focus like that. We're looking at all false religion, things that can be said definitively about every false religion that has ever existed, that exists now or ever will exist. There are transcendent principles that we should know. Along with that, I would want to emphasize that we're not addressing certain issues within the Christian church where there are differences of opinion. This is not a series about differences in baptism or different views of the end times. We're not calling those who disagree with us on believer's baptism a false religion or those who have different views of end times.

We're not calling them false teachers. Those things are important in their place, but they are secondary to the matters that are the concern that we want to address here this month. This series is about fundamental issues.

This series is about those crucial matters of authority. How do we know what is true? What do we appeal to to decide what is true and what is false?

These are fundamental issues about the person of God, the person of Christ, the nature of salvation. When a teacher, when a religion sets up a different authority than the Bible alone, it's a false religion. When a religion teaches a different God than the triune God of the Bible, it's a false religion. When a religion teaches a way of salvation that's based on ritual or human merit and works, then it's a false religion, as we will see. And so the questions that I want to answer in this series, and tonight's message is called A Right View of False Religion. I, for a moment, thought about giving it a better symmetry in the title, calling it a right view of wrong religion, but that didn't seem to be quite what I wanted to express.

You know, we want to be able to answer questions like this, very fundamental questions. How do we understand, how should we assess philosophies that deny absolute truth, that deny the very principle of absolute truth, that absolute truth exists? How are we to understand the polytheistic religions in the Far East and those that have multiple gods in their pantheon of deities? What are we to think about those who deny scripture or add to it with other forms of authority, other books of authority, other sources of authority? What are we to think about that? What are we to think about those who deny the Trinity or deny the deity of Christ? Those are the kinds of issues that we're talking about, and multiple religions have different combinations of these issues. What do we think of psychologically based assertions of human nature that teach self-esteem and deny the principle of sin and guilt before God?

What is the source of those things? Where does that come from, and what are we to think of it? Different authority, a different God or gods, a different Christ, a denial of sin, a different means of salvation and pardon and forgiveness. Well, beloved, there are common themes, and once I lay this out for you, you're going to be surprised at how evident and obvious this is, that you don't have to know a lot about comparative religions in order to be able to draw conclusions based on these issues.

Those things replace God, the God of the Bible, they replace his truth with falsehood and error, and they all fall under the biblical condemnation of idolatry. And so this series is not directed against any one particular religion, although inevitably I'll refer to different things along the way. It's not targeted at Catholicism. I've already done a series on Catholicism and laid out a biblical view of that.

It's not directed against specific teachers, although if certain men ever, in the unlikely event certain men ever came across this, it would definitely apply pressure to their toes, that would be a good thing. There are crucial differences between false religions. Catholicism is not, Mormonism is not Jehovah's Witnesses. But our focus in this series is on the fundamental things that they share in common, the fundamental things that they do in damage that they share in common, and ultimately on the final message of the series to come informed by such things for us to have an idea of how we are to respond to false religion. And part of the reason that I, there are many, many reasons why I'm doing this brief series.

It fits in the flow. It's a different kind of series than what we've been doing for the past several months, doing a detailed verse-by-verse exposition. I wanted to do something a little different to give you a mental break and breathe a different kind of air a little bit. And so, but one of the reasons, one of the reasons that I want to do, and in some ways the ultimate reason that I want to do this is for pastoral reasons, to give you a, to give you legitimate biblical protection, to guard you from things that you know and to help strengthen you against things that you know are errors, and also to guard you against unwittingly entering into a realm of danger. And it's the sad pastoral experience I've had over the years that people will pretend or think naively or whatever that they're just going to look into what other religions teach.

They're going to look into what teachers and proponents of Catholicism, for example, what they teach. And they think that they're doing something innocent and giving a fair hearing to another view. Well, there are many, many reasons why that is not only unwise, it is positively sinful for a professing Christian to do that. And I want to help you understand that and keep in mind that we're doing this on the heels, we're doing this on the heels of some exposition about Jesus said, it's a narrow way that leads to salvation. If you think of a narrow way having guardrails on it that lead you and keep you going in the right direction, well then it's incumbent upon us not to jump over the guardrails and into the realms of danger that Christ has warned us about in Scripture. And so it's ultimately a pastoral concern that causes me to do this, the fact that it brings us, it brings our pulpit into conflict with false teaching. To oppose it, that's just a very good side benefit. Ultimately, my point is not one of provoking conflict and controversy, although that's a side element of it.

It's for the protection of the flock, which is my number one responsibility as a pastor. So what can we say that is true about false religions by which we've identified certain basic things, different authority, different God, different Christ, denial of sin, different salvation, what can we say about those kinds of systems of religion? Well, we might as well get right to the heart of things with our first point here, is that false religion is satanic.

False religion is satanic, and it is necessary for us to start right there, to go right to the source, and then to be able to work out the consequences from there. False religion is not simply a matter of different cultures. It's not simply a cultural matter when the predominant religion in a region of the world is Hinduism or Buddhism or Islam. It's not just a cultural issue.

There are cultural issues with it, but it's not to be explained simply by a different culture, a different geography than what we have been placed in. False religion is ultimately satanic. Now, if I can bootstrap 55 messages into 55 seconds here, we've kind of laid out a biblical mind, a Christian mind in the series that I did in 2023, and we've made positive assertions of all different matters of biblical truth and what it means to have a biblical mind on God, on salvation and sin and all of those things. I'm kind of assuming all of that now and considering what do we do with religions and philosophy that shoot cannonballs at the foundations of the things that we've established from Scripture over the course of time. Well, false religion is satanic, and we can simply boil it down to this. Somebody that offers you a different final authority than the Bible is telling you a lie.

There is no other authority, there is no final authority except the 66 books of the Bible. Somebody that tells you that God is someone other than the triune God of the Bible, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, one God, three persons, co-eternal, co-existing, equally worthy of worship and obedience, says that denies that, offers you a different view of God is telling you a lie. Someone who says that Christ is not God or that Christ was merely a prophet, one prophet among many, and that the final prophet was Mohammed or some such thing is telling you a lie, teaching lies.

Someone who denies that the human race is lost in darkness and sin and that we're fundamentally good and that there is a spark of divinity in all of us and you can trust your heart, listen to your heart. They're telling you lies. Somebody that teaches a different way of salvation other than by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, based on the scriptures alone, to the glory of God alone is telling you a lie. These things are not true. And the question is, where do lies come from? Especially such fundamental distortions and denial of what the God of truth has said in his revealed word. Well, beloved, it's almost by definition, it's axiomatic, it's self-evident that a lie, like those things, cannot come from the God of truth. They do not come from the God of truth. God is always true. Scripture says in Titus 1 verse 2 that God cannot lie. God cannot contradict himself. And so that which contradicts what he's revealed in his word is by definition a falsehood. And systems of religion that promote these falsehoods are false religions.

Well, that has an immediate self-evident consequence. It means that false religion has its source in our adversary. It has its source in the devil, in Satan himself. And in John 8.44, we'll probably just kind of, I'll probably read most of these scriptures to you and just let you jot the reference down. In John 8.44, Jesus made a most fundamental statement about Satan and falsehood as he was responding to his critics of his day. He said, you are of your father, the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires. He was a murderer from the beginning and has nothing to do with the truth because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar.

And here's the key phrase for our purposes this evening, he is the father of lies. Satan is the one who gives birth to falsehood and false religion and false philosophies. And so when we encounter things that contradict clear, revealed biblical truth about God, scripture, Christ, and salvation, we immediately know that we are dealing with something that has come from the pit of hell itself. It has been inspired and instigated by Satan. Now look, as soon as you understand that, then immediately you realize that false religion is not something that is to be trifled with, or to be considered as an object of curiosity to explore. And another aspect of it, if you think back to Genesis 3 and how Satan tempted Eve in the garden and led to the fall of mankind, you realize that these lies can be very subtle, they can be insinuated not by assertions of a principle, but simply by raising questions in the minds of men. Did God really say that?

I'm just asking a question. And the question goes on and develops, and surely God, surely you will not die. But understand that these things that Satan can work and insinuate himself simply by asking seemingly innocuous, harmless questions that are actually a hook with bait on them to draw you out of the waters and onto the shore of deception. He is subtle in his appeals and subtle in his deceptions, and that method hasn't changed in the subsequent 6,000 years. It's so common to come across things on social media or books and people will ask questions. Well, what if God was not a trinity?

What if Jesus had never lived? And all of a sudden you're drawn out of the realm of truth and into speculation, and you're cast out to sea in a place of great danger as you respond to seemingly just a question, a speculation. And so Satan is subtle in his appeals, and we need to be aware of that. The fundamental point for right now is simply the assertion that every false religion, as I've defined it here this evening, it is satanic in origin because false religion by definition is a lie, and our Lord has taught us that lies come from Satan. He is the father of all lies. They have their ultimate source in him. And so what Satan does is he deceives men with false teaching to lead them away from the true God. Now, this can be in big ways and it can be in, you know, less obvious ways you might say. If you want to turn to the book of 1 Timothy chapter 4, 1 Timothy chapter 4, and look, as we read some of these things, it's not my fault that Scripture is self-evidently referring to false religions that manifest themselves like Catholicism do.

That's not my fault. That's just the truth of the Bible. 1 Timothy chapter 4, beginning in verse 1. Now, the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons. See, Paul says that there will be those who were for a time under the umbrella of the visible church. They were in your midst, as 1 John 2, 19 says, but they go out and they depart from the realm of the true faith and they devote themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons through, verse 2, the insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared.

And here's some of the things that they teach. Who forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. These extra biblical, legalistic teachings find their root in demons, in supernatural fallen angels who are devoted to the destruction of the children of mankind, who are devoted to introducing division and confusion and lies into the very church of God itself.

Now, beloved, that means that we need to have a heightened sense of awareness and caution around such things. This is not simply academic disputes among men about different kinds of theology with no real implication. We have to remember that what Scripture says, that the struggle for truth, the proclamation of truth, the evangelism and declaration of the gospel by the true church of God is a matter of wrestling, it says in Ephesians 6, verse 12, that we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. That is really sobering, at least it ought to be, to realize that when, and now to just kind of link it back to the teaching we've done recently from Matthew 7, when you start to unmask false religion in this way, you start to have a deeper appreciation and a sense of awe even at what Jesus was saying when he said, beware of the false prophets. When Scripture says, in fact let's just turn there because we're close by to 1 John chapter 4. 1 John chapter 4, verse 1, where the apostle John says, Beloved, and I love that pastoral note in the midst of such serious admonitions, he says, 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. Beloved, we are on notice, the Bible has put us on notice of the serious spiritual conflict that takes place between the Spirit of God as he works through the true church and all that is raised up in opposition against the truth, that there are forces of supernatural, personal evil devoted to destruction that are generating all of the opposition to the teaching of the truth. If you go to, since we're in 1 John 4, you can go to the end of 1 John 5, verse 19, where we read, We know that we are from God, and the whole world lies in the power of the evil one. And as you're letting that sink in, let me read to you from 2 Corinthians 11, verses 13 through 15.

Some of these texts, you know, we've touched on recently in the past, but it's good to repeat and emphasize them. The apostle Paul, speaking against the false teachers and false apostles of his day, said this in verse 12 of chapter 11, 2 Corinthians, What I do I will continue to do in order to undermine the claim of those who would like to claim in their boasted mission that they work on the same terms as we do. They were claiming to be of parallel authority, parallel trustworthiness to the apostle Paul.

They were on the same terms with him, is what they would say. And Paul says, I have to undermine that claim. They are not on, they are not from Christ.

They are not like me. They are false apostles. Paul says, I am a true apostle. And so you must make distinctions and follow the true and reject the false.

And what does he say? He goes on in verse 13. For such men are false apostles, deceitful workmen, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ. Just the exact same principle that Jesus said as he warned us about wolves who come to us in sheep's clothing. They're false apostles.

They look harmless. What could be the risk of a little bit different view of God or a little bit different view of salvation? Well, we can't think that way.

We can't minimize this just because the truth is uncomfortable. He goes on to say in verse 14, And no wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. So it is no surprise if his servants also disguise themselves as servants of righteousness.

Their end will correspond to their deeds. And so, beloved, I trust that this little brief survey of some of these texts is sufficient to help you understand and appreciate and appropriate the reality that false religion is satanic. It finds its roots all the way back in Satan, and it's not to be expected. We're not to expect that we're going to easily and immediately recognize the danger of false religion, sometimes even the reality of a false religion staring us in the face, because it's disguised to look like the truth. And so we have to be discerning. We have to be on guard. We have to test the spirits to make sure that we are following the spirit of truth who points us to Christ as he's revealed in Scripture, and not following a different spirit, which is really the spirit of antichrist, which, at the end of Scripture, we see all of that stuff and deception and the demons and those who followed them are all gathered up and cast into the pit and locked away into eternal destruction forever. These are matters of great eternal consequence.

By recognizing the source of it, we immediately realize how serious the issue is. Well, my friend, before we go after today's broadcast, I just want to invite you to look me up on Facebook, Don Green on Facebook. I often make original posts. I make comments about ministry and other matters of biblical importance there that do not make their way into this broadcast. And so if you are on Facebook, I invite you to join me. Look for Don Green and join us on Facebook for another way to connect with our ministry. That's Don Green, founding pastor of Truth Community Church in Cincinnati, Ohio. Thank you so much for listening to The Truth Pulpit. Join us next time for more as we continue teaching God's people God's Word.