The Devil's Great Commission

These heretics who are already infiltrating the church and their world during this day, they believed that they had advanced to a higher understanding of God. And I tell you that because you need to know John's poking them in the eye. How?

Notice again. Anyone going too far and what? Not abiding and not keeping their stakes planted in the Word of God.

You do that, you've gone too far. You're never advancing spiritually, beloved. If you're leaving the Bible behind, you never graduate from the Bible. Some people act as if the Bible is for simple minded people and leaving the Bible behind is the way of wisdom.

Have you met people like that? Well, that's a lie. The Bible is God's truth. Unfortunately, false teachers are proclaiming many different versions of Jesus in an attempt to give people what they want to hear and lead them away from the truth. Remember in the New Testament when Jesus gave his disciples the Great Commission? Well, Satan also has a commission. It's his commission to false teachers with a deceptive message. Today on Wisdom for the Heart, Stephen takes you to 2nd John with a lesson called The Devil's Great Commission.

Stephen examines John's warning about the deceptive messages of false teachers and how to identify them. One pastor and author recently, tongue in cheek, categorized a number of popular versions about Jesus and making the point that not every Jesus is the real Jesus. For instance, he said there's the open minded Jesus.

He wants everybody to coexist since everyone's right anyway. He loves everyone all the time no matter what they believe except for people who are not open minded like you. There's Starbucks Jesus.

He just loves spiritual conversations. He drinks fair trade coffee, goes to film festivals and drives a hybrid. There's Republican Jesus. He's against tax increases, big government.

He's for family values and owning firearms. There's touchdown Jesus. He helps athletes run faster and jump higher and score more points than those who didn't pray before the game. There's martyr Jesus.

He's a good man who died a cruel death and we ought to feel sorry for him. There's gentle Jesus, high cheek bones, flowing hair, walks around barefoot and looks very European. There's hippie Jesus who teaches everyone to give peace a chance.

Imagine a world without religion. He wants to remind us all that all we need is love. There's career Jesus. Career Jesus gives us that great job when we think positive thoughts every morning and reach for our potential and stretch for the stars so we can ultimately buy more stuff. There's spirituality Jesus. He hates churches, pastors, doctrine.

He would rather have people out in nature finding the God within while listening to weird music. There's guru Jesus. He's an inspirational teacher who actually believes in you.

He helps you find your center which is again all about finding you. Finally there's good Jesus. He came to simply show you how to help people live the golden rule, save the planet and become a better you. Well the danger of selling a false Jesus, a popular Jesus, a comfortable Jesus isn't new. The deception and distortion and danger attracts you all the way back to the apostles. Paul will warn the Corinthian church about deceitful workers disguising themselves as messengers of Christ. We're coming in the name of Jesus.

The question is which Jesus? And with that we arrive at the heart of John the apostle's warning. So go back to your copy of his little postcard called 2 John. John is not only about to remind this woman he's writing to the real Jesus, he's about to equip her and her children and the church at large how to spot a false teacher. He wants to protect her.

He wants to educate her and frankly to this day this little postcard remains a fantastic education on how to spot false teaching. Notice verse 7 which is where we've arrived today. For many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in flesh or coming into flesh. This is the deceiver and the antichrist. Go down to verse 9.

I want to keep these together and unpack them together. He goes on to describe them. Anybody who goes too far and does not abide in the teaching of Christ does not have God.

The one who abides in the teaching, he has both the Father and the Son. Now for the sake of our study to sort of outline our thoughts let me give you six words that essentially show up in John's description of false teachers. First of all, they are deceptive.

Go back to verse 7. For many deceivers have gone out into the world. The fact that John makes a reference here to many deceivers indicates this isn't a little problem.

This isn't a minor little issue. This is a widespread movement and get that the word John uses here for deceivers is planos which means wanderer. Planos is from the same word family as planetes. It gives us our word planet. The ancient world thought that planets and stars were just sort of randomly wandering out there in space.

So like some wandering planet, John uses that word. These false teachers are leading people into sort of a roving, mindless, unsettled, wandering path. Jude, by the way, describes false teachers as wandering stars for whom the blackness is reserved forever.

Jude 13. The false teachers essentially want to pull you into their orbit as they wander away from the sun, S-O-N, into outer darkness, spiritual blindness. They're deceptive though. They're probably self-deceived, many of them as well. They're not going to come to you and say I am a deceiver. Want to follow me? They're not carrying signs around that say let me lead you into spiritual darkness.

Follow me and we'll wander through life without any real meaning. That's not how they approach you. They're pretending to care about the Savior. They're pretending to care about Jesus. They're even pretending to care about you. They really only want a following, Titus describes them. They want somebody to care about themselves. I'll never forget hearing years ago that the enemy of the church doesn't most often stand out there and fire missiles to try to destroy the church.

He comes inside and joins it. He plays a role. The false teacher knows how to smile for the camera, plays along. They're great pretenders. Secondly, they're not only deceivers, they are disciple makers. Notice again in verse 7, for many deceivers have gone out into the world. They've gone out. Embedded in that original verb is a word which gives us our word exit. They exited. That lets us know they exited the church, certainly the truth.

More than likely these are the same ones John referred to in his first epistle, 1 John chapter 2 when he said in fact he used the same verb, excelphos. They exited from us, that is they went out from us, but they were really not of us. For if they had been of us, they would have remained with us. He's not talking about a believer who backslides and needs restoration. He's talking about somebody that has exited the accountability of the church family. They have exited the gospel held by the true church. They've exited the teaching of the gospel. They've left and now they are trying to talk everybody they can into leaving Jesus with them.

But what's really chilling to me is John's expression here of them going out into the world. They view themselves on a special mission. By the way, John uses the same language of the Lord where he as an apostle commissioned by the Lord heard the same language, go into all the world and make disciples, Mark 16, 15. Go and make disciples of all the nations, Matthew 28, 19, which means these false teachers are equally passionate with their global disciple making enterprise. They are as passionate as you are in making disciples. In fact, every country I've ever been, I run into people from this country who are there on some kind of mission distorting who Jesus is and winning disciples. They're just as passionate.

In fact, in my mind, I've often thought, I wonder if they're more passionate than I am. They're into disciple making. I can't help but think how fast is this taking place. I mean, John's the last living disciple. It's in his lifetime that he's written that already you have this enterprise with many of these disciple makers spreading out, attempting to, as the ambassadors of error, deceive the world and disunify the body of Christ that are already at him.

How fast is this? It made me think of Mark Twain, not the best theologian, but Mark Twain made a great observation when he made the observation that a lie can travel halfway around the world while truth is still putting on his shoes. Just imagine the implications of this global mission. This is the fact that the devil has his own twisted version of the great commission. The commission of Jesus to his disciples was go tell the truth. The commission of the devil to his disciples is go tell lies as passionately and as strategically as you can desire to make disciples for the kingdom of light. They're making disciples for the kingdom of darkness. Third, they are deniers. They are deniers for many deceivers of going out into the world, those who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in flesh or in the flesh. And with this, by the way, John arrives at the core of his warning and the core of their error.

And by the way, beloved, this is the main issue to keep in mind. You don't have to be an expert in all the world religions out there. You can learn more of what they believe so that you can be a better apologist, that is, you can defend the truth by knowing more of what they believe. But all you really need to remember is that false teachers and false teaching is fundamentally attempting to sell the world a false Jesus, described and defined in the Bible, which is why they've usually got something additional for you to read. You got to read this.

They're not going to come to your house and verbally say, you know what you ought to do? You ought to throw the Bible away. Here, read this.

No, just add this. I had a couple of people on my doorstep the other day and their opening line was, we'd like to interest you in reading the Bible. I said, well, I've always wanted to be interested in that.

How can you help me? They really want to do is read to find the nature and person and purpose of Jesus Christ. So even though they're going to give you the little proof text, even though they're going to turn on their own translation of the Bible that makes Jesus not the God but a God, even though they're going to take you to something that's going to stump the dickens out of you, you just wait and you get back again and again to the core issue, the key core question. Do you believe in the coming of God the Son who became the literal God in the flesh Messiah?

All you need to know and then you can kind of hold your breath. I did a little research and review on some of these world religions, false teachings, systems of false error and doctrine. Baha'i views God as unknowable, unable to incarnate himself. Christian science believes Jesus is a highly enlightened man. Jehovah's Witnesses believe Jesus is a created angel. Mormonism views Jesus as an exalted deity by virtue of his obedience.

Scientology says Jesus was just invented by the church. The Unitarian Universalist sees Jesus again as merely a good man. The Unity School of Christianity sees Jesus as the inner self of everybody.

Zen Buddhism views Jesus as a good man but not a savior because well man doesn't need saving and on and on. See this is the unifying theme of false teaching. At some point they're going to fudge on Jesus. They're going to waffle and then it's going to be like trying to nail Jell-O to the wall as you keep pressing the point of who is Jesus. See at some point they're going to have to waffle on the deity, the purpose, the divine nature along with a human nature, the eternality, the sovereignty, the sinlessness, the final atoning sacrifice of the biblical Jesus. You notice John points out here that they do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh.

That word flesh is a figure of speech in which the word flesh is intended to incorporate everything he did. So they don't acknowledge in other words his virgin birth. They don't acknowledge his sinless life, his atoning death, his literal resurrection, his literal ascension, his soon literal coming. They do not acknowledge the word in 1 John 1 is translated confess. They can't agree with, they can't say the same thing as the Bible says about it. They don't acknowledge it.

By the way, would you notice that John hints at the subtlety of their cleverness? He doesn't say and they openly deny Jesus coming in the flesh. No, he just says they don't acknowledge. They just won't say it.

They won't talk about it. In other words false teachers can be detected not just in what they say but in what they just never do get around to saying. That's why they can be so deceptive as they use biblical terminology and redefining it in not saying what it really means.

How many false preachers and teachers have I seen on television or in print where they won't quite say that sin is sinful, that Jesus is the only way to heaven. They just never want to get around being pressed to say that. They don't want to talk about guilty sinners in need of repentance. They don't want to talk about this. They're just simply going to deny by virtue of never bringing it up. We don't talk about hell either.

Imagine if you really believe in an eternal place of judgment called hell. I'm just never going to talk about it. I'm never going to warn them.

It's like telling your kids, I know there are cars going up and down the street that can kill you but I'm just never going to mention it. By the way, the implication here as well is that they don't want to talk about Jesus coming again. They're only going to leave him wherever he is. He'll ruin the party. So we're not going to talk about him coming again.

We really want him to stay wherever that is. Beloved, that is a different Jesus. The bottom line is Sam Gordon wrote it so well is this. The Christ they offer to their converts is not the Christ of history. He's not the Christ of scripture.

He's not the Christ of the gospel. So here's the profile of a false teacher. He's a deceiver. He's a disciple maker.

Those are hard to spot because they look so good but he's a denier. Fourth, false teachers are demonic. These false teachers are literally ambassadors of the devil. Like in Matthew 7, we're given the scene where they stand before the Lord and many of them will have fit this profile here and they will say no, no, no, no, wait a second. We did everything we did in the name of Jesus. We preached in the name of Jesus. We healed in the name of Jesus. We prophesied in the name of Jesus. We did everything in your name. We didn't run around saying this is now in the name of the devil.

This is now in the name of Satan. We did it in your name and Jesus is going to say I didn't know you. Which means then here's the horror of that self-deception as Jesus rips off the mask of hypocrisy and reveals to them they were essentially demonically driven, demonically inspired, demonically empowered. They never did anything for Jesus.

It was really all about themselves. They just used the name of Jesus to scam the church and gather a following. In fact, Jesus said that the false teachers and religious leaders of his day recorded in Matthew 23, listen to these words, woe to you scribes and Pharisees. You travel around on sea and land to make one proselyte, one God-fear, one of your disciples. And when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as yourselves. That wasn't very nice.

Imagine they are traveling on land and on sea. They are passionately devoted to the devil's great commission. They are actually making their converts doubly accountable, doubly ensnared, doubly damned, if you can imagine it.

Why? They are already condemned but now they are going to be held to a double accountability in having believed in a false Jesus. False teachers, fifth, are disoriented.

Look down at verse 9. Anyone who goes too far and does not abide in the teaching of Christ does not have God. They may fool themselves.

They may fool other people. They may use the words God and Jesus and the Spirit and spiritual and all of that but they are not really abiding in the teaching. Again, that word abiding shows up. They have not pitched a tent here. They have not driven down stakes in here. They do not abide by this book. They do not want to be confined to it, by the way.

It is too narrow. They do not want to abide here, which is why they are not really interested in teaching God's word. They might talk about it. They might talk around it. They might refer to it. They might quote a verse or two from it. They might even hold it up but the last thing you will ever hear them doing is actually teaching through it. They would rather pursue their own clever thinking, their own personal vision, their own additional information, their own principles, their own revelation, their own fascinating dreams.

I mean that stuff is a lot more interesting. In fact, this is exactly what John is hinting at here. The word he uses for anyone who goes too far. That word can be translated in a positive sense for advancing.

Someone who advances too far. Now John is battling the Gnostics, these heretics who are already infiltrating the church and their world during this day. They believed that they had advanced to a higher understanding of God. They had come up with these secret ways for salvation.

They had come, they believed to an enlightened understanding of Jesus. And I tell you that because you need to know John is poking them in the eye. You are advancing but you are advancing too far. Why? How?

Notice it again. Anyone going too far and what? Not abiding, not keeping their stakes planted in the word of God. You do that, you've gone too far. You're never advancing spiritually beloved. If you're leaving the Bible behind, you never graduate from the Bible. That was good for me back then.

I've got something new. No, to do that is not to advance. It is to plunge into spiritual disorientation.

Yes you grow. Yes we advance. But we do this like the Apostle Peter who said, but grow in grace and in the knowledge of your Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Second Peter 3.18. So be warned, false teachers are deceivers, fail makers, deniers, demonic, disoriented.

Finally number 6. They are doomed. Verse 9. Anyone who goes too far and does not abide in the teaching of Christ does not have God. The one who abides in the teaching has both the Father and the Son. In other words you deny Jesus and you forfeit the Father. So you lose the Son and you lose everything one day. You receive the Son and you will gain everything one day forever. And so friends, be alert to false teaching that would lead you away from the truth of Jesus Christ.

This is Wisdom for the Heart. Our ministry is dedicated to the proclamation of God's Word and you can join us each weekday as Stephen Davey explains and applies God's Word to your heart. If you ever have to miss one of these broadcasts, these messages are posted to our website which you'll find at wisdomonline.org. Go there anytime.

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