What False Religion Takes Away #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. Our first message in the series was titled A Right View of False Religion. A better title might have been A Right View of Wrong Religion, so that there's a little bit more symmetry to the title, but that's okay. A Right View of False Religion, and we need to be able to think rightly about these things. God commands us all to be discerning. Jesus said in Matthew 7, verse 15, he said, beware of false prophets who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves. We are on notice from the Lord Jesus Christ himself that we need to be watching out for false teachers, false prophets, false religions. This is part of the responsibility of a true disciple of Christ to think about these things clearly and rightly and to be on guard, lest we be drawn astray and lest we draw other people astray. And that's one of the things that in a room like this with a lot of earnest Christians, this is one of the things that should motivate us to be discerning and to be careful about what we read and what we follow and what we do with our minds, because it's not simply us leading ourselves astray, but that what an awful thing to think that we might be an instrument of leading others astray through our own carelessness.

To me, that's just an appalling, unthinkable thought. And so when we see false religion clearly, then it helps us to be on our guard and to build a fence around the truth and protect that. We have a responsibility to exercise good and right and biblical judgment about religion. It is part of the life of a true disciple of Christ.

And the world can say what I'm about to say. Lots of people in the church can say what I'm about to say. They can say that all paths lead to God and that it doesn't really matter what you believe and you have your truth, I have my truth. The true Christian knows that that's an impossible way to think, that it borders on blasphemy to talk that way. When the one that we call Lord, our precious Lord Jesus Christ said, no one comes to the Father except through me. And so part of being a disciple, part of following Christ as Lord is thinking like he thinks and understanding truth as he taught us to understand it. And that means that that Christianity is exclusive. The Lord Jesus Christ is the only way to be reconciled to God. He is the only way to heaven and every other false religion, every religion that does not recognize Christ in that way is sending people to hell. It is the blind leading the blind.

And so one of the things that I said this past, well, three weeks ago now, it's almost like ancient history. We're not looking at specific religions per se in this series. This is not a series on Catholicism or Mormonism or Jehovah's Witnesses or Islam.

You know, there's a place for those kinds of studies. But that's not what we're doing in this series. We're just looking at the things that can be said to be true about all false religion. And we're also, you know, and to be clear, we're not addressing matters, issues of baptism or eschatology.

You know, what do you believe about the rapture? Those issues are outside the scope of this. Those things are important in their place, but they're secondary. We're talking about more fundamental issues of authority and truth and not matters that Christians over the centuries have had different opinions about. This is about fundamental issues.

Oh, I love saying things like this. This is about fundamental issues of authority, of God and of salvation. These are fundamental matters that we are talking about here. And so we ask the question, how do we as Christians, how do we understand? How are we to rightly think about, for example, philosophies that deny the very principle of absolute truth in the world that we live, the postmodern world we live in that, you know, that denies that there is even such a thing as absolute truth? How are we to think about that?

How do we assess that? What do we think about those who, about liberals who deny scripture altogether and substitute in their philosophies of evolution and their philosophies about, you know, how to find natural law, natural truth? What do we think about religions?

This is kind of the key and focus for tonight. What do we think about religions that look at the Bible, maybe nod in the general direction of scripture and make an affirmation of respect for the Bible and even call it in some manner the word of God, and yet they add to it other forms of authority, other books that they receive as revelation through a prophet, like Mormons with Joseph Smith or Islam with Muhammad, you know, and they have books that they say, or Catholics with their tradition that have, if not a superior authority to the Bible, at least say that there's something of equal authority that must be read alongside the Bible. What do we think about those kinds of things? What do we think about those religions that would deny the Trinity? You know, the Unitarians that say there's only one God and there is no such thing as a Trinity, or religions like Jehovah's Witnesses that deny the deity of Christ, and Mormons do the similar thing in denying the pre-existence of Christ and his full equality with God, and they turn Jesus into somebody else. You know, Mormons like to say, well, we're pointing people to Jesus too. What they don't tell you is, is that they're pointing you to a completely different Jesus than the one of the Bible, and what has been understood since the fourth century, clearly and established in the creeds of the church, about the full humanity and the full deity of the Lord Jesus Christ, and they turn him into something else, a spirit child of Mary and Adam.

You know, this is not the same Jesus that we talk about. How do we see religions like that? What should we think about philosophies of psychology and those systems that teach men to honor their own self-esteem and essentially deny human sin and tell people that, you know, you shouldn't feel guilt over anything.

You know, you're a victim, you're a product of the way that your parents raised you, and you're not responsible for your behavior or your thinking. What should we think about that? You know, it's a religion all of its own. What do we think of religions that promise heaven to people based on their faithfulness and obedience, or promise heaven if you'll just get baptized in our church and, you know, and follow the rules that we lay down upon you, and, you know, and what are we to think about that?

Now, it should be obvious to you in what I've said, we've covered a whole range of a whole lot of different things, that at first glance you might not see any immediate connection between all of these things. You know, human philosophies and, you know, Catholics and Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses, but there are things that unite all of these false systems that unite them in their opposition to biblical Christianity, and that's what we need to see. At one level or another, all of these systems are united by the fact that they have a different authority than biblical Christianity. They put forth a different God, a different Christ.

Not all but most will deny sin in the biblical sense of the term, and the depravity of man, and that we're born into sin, and we, you know, we inherit sin from Adam. Different salvation, religions that deny the existence of an afterlife, deny heaven, or more commonly deny the existence of hell. These systems, these false religions, they all replace the true God revealed in Scripture, and they replace his truth with falsehood and error, and they all fall under the biblical condemnation of idolatry, false worship of a false God. And what we said three weeks ago, we said three things about false religion that's true of every system I mentioned, every system that I mentioned. False religion, all false religion is ultimately satanic. Jesus said in John 844 that the devil is the father of lies. Well, the lies that we've discussed that are found in religion are, you know, they ultimately find their source in Satan, the great deceiver. And so it's important for us to realize that when we encounter false religion, we have encountered something that is directly from Satan himself, that the battle is open and obvious, and it has been brought to, you know, sometimes literally, it's been brought right to your doorstep by the apostles of these false religions.

It is satanic. We should not consider false religion. We shouldn't look at religious people just speaking very, very generally and saying, well, you know, at least they're not utter pagans. At least they believe in God of some kind. That's deadly thinking.

That's wrong thinking. False religion is satanic. Secondly, we said that false religion is sinful. It is sinful to follow false religion.

It is sinful to teach it. It is sinful to follow it. God commands that we have no other God before him.

Exodus 20, verse 3. He commands that he be worshipped alone as the one true God. And so to worship another God is satanic, and it is a direct violation. It is a direct transgression of the first and foundational commandment that you are to have no other gods before him, that you are to love the Lord your God with all of your heart, soul, strength, and mind. Jesus said that is the greatest commandment, and the greatest commandment is directed to the one true God of the Bible, who is a trinity.

He is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And if that is not your God, then you are sinning in a most profound way, the most fundamental way. And we also said that false religion is sentenced to judgment. Those who practice idolatry will not enter into the kingdom of God. They are judged.

They will be sent away on the final day. And so it is satanic. It is sinful.

It is sentenced to judgment. Now, one of the reasons, one of the reasons that I am dwelling on this so much and pausing to do this series is, you know, recent experience in pastoral ministry, where I as a pastor, where we as elders warned people about the steps that they were taking in the direction of false religion. And as is so often the case with such people, our warnings were dismissed, and people become increasingly hardened and arrogant in the midst of it, which is exactly what you would think would happen under the influence of something that is satanic and sinful and sentenced to judgment. Those kinds of interactions over the course of ministry, those things grieve my heart. It grieves my heart to see people who were under the truth to walk away from it. And so it is my responsibility then as a pastor, when I see that happen, to take steps, to teach on it, to help people see the danger, and as it were, to whistle for sheep to come back into the fold and to not just wander away. And a sheep wandering away from the flock is one who is very, very vulnerable. And one of the things that you see is that when people start down that path, they get hard, as I mentioned.

They become unteachable. They don't want to listen anymore because there's a willfulness to that, and there is also a fact that they are being brought into the vortex of a satanic sphere, and they are now under the influence of forces that are far greater than themselves, dark forces, and it comes out in dark ways. And so my responsibility before God, if not before man, is to warn and help people understand so that this is not seen as something, you know, it's not like this is a disinterested, casual, intellectual pursuit when people start reading the original sources in false religion. You know, this is of utmost spiritual context.

And so to be faithful to Christ, we must be people of discernment. And what I'm doing tonight, that kind of covers the review, what I want to do tonight, and hopefully this will be plain and simple enough, the title of tonight's message is What False Religion Takes Away. What False Religion Takes Away. And what I want to do here tonight, I'm basically teaching the people of God here as the target audience here, if people outside the kingdom would be motivated to seek truth more seriously and earnestly, that would be wonderful as the Lord uses it in different ways. But primarily I want you to understand what it is that people lose when they pursue false religion or they practice false religion and come under its influence. What they lose in comparison to the riches that belong to us in the true Christ. And so for the sake of time tonight, I'm only going to cover two principles, what it is that false religion takes away.

I'm only going to give you two. This is meant to be introductory. This is certainly not exhaustive.

There are many other things that we could talk about in addition to these two things, but these are the two things that I want to emphasize tonight. Now, when you come to dealing with systems of philosophy, systems of religion, ultimately what you have to understand is you kind of have to brush away the weeds and kind of blow away all of the smoke about different matters and realize that at the heart a system of religion has a final authority that it appeals to. What is the authority that a religion appeals to? And then also religion eventually has to deal with the person of Christ one way or another. They've got to dispense with the lordship of Christ and deal with him in another way. And so what I want to show you tonight is that false religion, speaking again, speaking broadly, false religion takes away Scripture from those who follow it, and it would take Scripture away from you if you started to dabble in false religion. And then secondly, that false religion takes away our Savior. It takes away Scripture. It takes away our Savior in ways that I will explain as we go along.

So let's start with our first point. False religion takes away Scripture. And I suppose I could have said this a little earlier, but there's a way for you to think about the Word of God, about the concept of the Word of God biblically. And we can classify the Word of God in two ways. There is the written Word of God, the 66 books of the Bible, and there is the incarnate Word of God, the Lord Jesus Christ. God has revealed himself in Scripture. God has revealed himself in the Lord Jesus Christ.

He has revealed himself in a fixed book, an unaltering, an unchanging, infallible book, and he has also revealed himself in the unchanging, infallible person of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now when it comes to biblical Christianity, which we uphold and defend here without apology, not that we do it perfectly, but that is our unalterable commitment as a church, what we need to know and listen and remember is that Jesus Christ and the Bible are the foundation for all truth and authority. Final authority rests in the person of Jesus Christ. Final authority rests in the Scripture.

These two support one another. Christ testifies to Scripture. Scripture testifies to Christ. And if you have questions about the final authority of Scripture, you could look for my message on sola Scriptura and we could review the principles that way.

But that is central. The Word of God written and incarnate. That's a beautiful phrase for a Christian to know and to think of.

I believe in the Word of God, the written Word of God, the incarnate Word of God. And those two things kind of sum up and bring us under the umbrella of all of true Christianity. Scripture and Christ are the refuge of our souls. Christ is the one, as we sang earlier, in his obedient life he lived for us and kept the law on our behalf.

In his death, he paid the penalty of sin on our behalf. And in Christ we find, not in our own merit, not in our faithfulness, not in our obedience, do we find that which is acceptable to God? No, it's in Christ. It's when we are in Christ by faith that his obedience and his faithfulness and his shed blood is what gives us reconciliation and peace with God. And we know these things through the revealed Word of God, the written Word of God. And so, my friends, it should be very clear in your mind, going forward if it hasn't been beforehand, that the Word of God written and incarnate is that which is foundational to everything about being a true Christian. Apart from the written Word of God, we have no Christianity.

Apart from the true Lord Jesus Christ, all the fullness of deity dwells in him in bodily form. Apart from him, there is no Christianity. You don't have Christianity if you just like the moral precepts of the Sermon on the Mount or some of the Ten Commandments. That's not Christianity. Christianity is found in Christ. Well, because there is one system of doctrine and one system of salvation that is taught in Scripture, and these things are clear and established, the Bible is clear on the essential matters of salvation.

We call that the perspicuity of Scripture, just a fancy 25-cent theological word, that Scripture is clear in the fundamental doctrines that it teaches. Now, because Scripture is clear, what a false religion has to do is it has to get around the Bible in order to introduce its false and destructive heresies and false and destructive teachings to its adherents. And so what false religion must do is it must displace—watch this, I'll say it again for emphasis— false religion must displace the exclusive and final authority of Scripture.

It has to do that. Every false religion has to do that. It has to take the Bible off of the throne of authority and put something else there or establish another throne beside it, which is really the same thing as taking away the final authority of Scripture. False religion must displace the exclusive authority of Scripture in order to exist and to survive so that there can't be an appeal to the Bible or it would undo the entire system. And so stay with me here, if you would, please.

It's all for your upbuilding, beloved. So, for example, liberal theology, liberal denominations that some of you have come out of, and I commend you for that and thank God for His work in your heart, that you would do so. Liberal theology will deny Scripture altogether, deny its inerrancy, deny that it's an inspired Word of God and talk about it as a Word of man and a historical document that's 2,000 years old and it's outdated and not believable and we have new ways of thinking now. You know, that's one way that false religion takes away Scripture from you. It disparages the Bible with those kinds of false accusations and under the influence of that, you no longer look to the Bible with a sense of love and respect for what it truly is, the Word of God.

You view it as a document that should be set aside, that is disreputable, that should not be listened or respected. Liberal theology will deny the deity of Christ and say that he was a mere man or, you know, maybe they'll patronize him with the idea that he was a good teacher, a good example for us, but we're all Christs in our own sense. Other religions will claim new prophets, prophets with a pH, not prophets, material monetary prophets, of course. They'll claim prophets or added revelation that is put alongside Scripture and has equal authority with Scripture.

So as we've said many times, but we repeat these things because they're so important. So what you find with Catholics is they'll tell you good things about the Bible, but then they will say, but we also have the traditions of the Church that you must also know and follow. Seventh-day Adventists have the writings of Ellen G. White. Mormons have the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith as their new prophet.

Islam has Muhammad. Charismatics have their so-called apostles and prophets that they say, and I speak this disparagingly, that give new revelation from God. Now, beloved, what you have to see is there is a common unifying thing here that in all of those instances where Scripture is not explicitly denied and thrown out, that other things are put alongside it so that we have a new prophet. Let me tell you about the new prophet that we have since the days of the Bible. Let me tell you about the Word of God that came to me or came to my pastor or came to someone in our church. Let me tell you about the way God has been speaking to my heart. And in every instance, beloved, what you need to see and understand and pay attention to is they're saying, I have a new avenue of revelation from God that is authoritative, that is God's Word, and that you must listen to if you are going to be rightly related to God.

Every instance of it is like that, no matter how they may try to dress it up and confuse the issue. I remember in college when I was at Indiana University as a non-Christian, I came across a piece of literature from an Eastern religion. And I don't remember the full details of it, but even as an unbeliever at the time, this stood out and struck me. They said, the followers of our Eastern religion believe the Bible. They follow Jesus Christ.

And so you drop your guard when you hear that. Okay, well, if you follow Christ, then what could be wrong? But then it went on to say, I wish I had kept this paper at the time, but our disciples also follow Hare Krishna or whatever it was. And right there was the warning sign, not the exclusive authority of the Bible, not the exclusive authority of Jesus Christ, not Christ as the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the Father but through Him, but someone put parallel to Christ. Revelation put parallel to the Bible. And of course, once you concede that point, then the inevitable result is Scripture is put aside and this new or this different authority is what is put front and center. And so you are lulled to sleep by the formal acknowledgement of Scripture. And then the camel has his nose under the tent, so to speak, and then the camel gets in and takes over the tent and Scripture is put aside and all of these other things are laid out in their place. This is true of Charismatics. If you want to talk to somebody that is just completely unteachable, find somebody that thinks that God has spoken to them in a private revelation, in a vision, in a dream, in a voice in their head, and try to confront them with Scripture.

They'll have nothing to do with it. No, God has spoken to me. And so the new revelation in the Charismatic realm comes over Scripture.

I don't care what they say to try to diminish that. As soon as you open the door to new revelation, you're setting Scripture aside. The last verses of the Bible, within the last three verses of the Bible, God warns about adding to or taking away from the words of Scripture and pronounces a curse on those who do that.

That is not a minor inconsequential thing. God had finished the book of Revelation and the process of revelation and he says now that this word is completed, do not add to it and do not take away from it. Scripture ends on a warning against undermining the final authority of Scripture.

All of these things that we've alluded to here, they call you to chase after something beyond Scripture. And in so doing, they undermine, they take away your final confidence in Scripture in the final authority and trustworthiness and that God has said everything that is necessary, everything that he intends to reveal in Scripture. Now, they whistle for you.

If I could whistle, I would do so just to make the effect. They whistle you away from the Bible and say, come over here and look at that. You turn your back on Scripture in order to look at something else. And when that happens, when that happens, they have taken Scripture away from you and have pointed you in a different direction.

Another thing that's happened so many times over the course of ministry, one of the ways that you see this work out with people that follow Catholicism is that inevitably, if they get two steps into it, they're going to want to talk to you about a 10th century document that the Pope put out at that point and get into all of these obscure church laws, church councils, church things of that nature. And you lose all sense of perspective when you do that when the Bible has been put aside so that you're looking at these ancient documents as if they were something important that you needed to know. Well, beloved, Scripture teaches us plainly that if you needed to know it for the sake of peace with God, it is in the Bible. If it is not in the Bible, it is not essential. And if it is something that contradicts the Bible, then it is false and a satanic lie by definition. And so false religion will take Scripture away from you even if it doesn't explicitly deny it by turning your attention to something else, something new, which in our mindsets, you know, our Western mindset, newer is better.

Well, that's deadly thinking for a true Christian. Well, my friend, just before we close today's broadcast, I just wanted to give a special word of greeting and thanks to the many people that listen to our podcast internationally. It's remarkable to me, the last report that I saw listed 83 different countries that in one way or another are listening to us. And I just want to send a special word of greeting to those of you that are in lands that are distant from my own home here in the United States. You know, we've seen people from every continent except maybe Antarctica and people from countries like Ireland and Australia and Singapore, Canada, the UK, India.

I have friends in all of those countries. And whether you've met me face to face or whether you only know me as a voice through your favorite device, I just want to say God bless you. Thank you for your interest in the Word of God. And may the Spirit of God work deeply in your heart as you continue to study God's Word. Thank you for being with us. Thank you for your prayers. God bless you. My prayers and love are with you as well. And we'll see you next time on The Truth Pulpit. 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.