As believers, we have the truth of the gospel that we rest our hope securely in. God has reconciled the move toward man, reconciling them to himself through Christ. That's the distinguishing mark of Christianity. And everything then flows out of the context of who we are as redeemed, reconciled, clothed in the righteousness of Christ, children of God by faith alone and Christ alone. We have that kind of Savior. We have that kind of salvation. And what does the false teacher focus on?
Everything but him. The distinguishing mark of Christianity is the gospel and the redemption that Jesus Christ brought us. Just like there are pastors and teachers who clearly articulate that truth, there are also false teachers who distort the truth and mislead others. That's really one of the main dangers of our culture. Some teachers in our society, and sometimes even in our churches, are nothing more than con artists.
They position themselves as spiritual leaders but their message is empty. Today on Wisdom for the Heart, Stephen will help you identify a false teacher. David writes in Psalm 121, I will lift up my eyes to the mountains. From where shall my help come from? My help comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth. He will not allow your foot to slip. He who keeps you will not slumber. Behold, he who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep. The Lord is your keeper. The Lord is your shade on your right hand. The sun will not smite you by day nor the moon by night. The Lord will protect you from all evil. He will keep your soul. The Lord will guard your going out and your coming in from this time forth and forever. Would you pray with me? We raise our eyes today and our hearts to you, the true giver of life and the genuine authentic source of what truly matters. And so as we have an opportunity to sing praise to you and describe with our singing your character and your majesty, your attributes, your grace and love, I pray that we would not hold back for you are deserving of everything. All that takes place in this hour from the fellowshipping together to the reading, praying and studying and singing that it would exalt you, that it would indeed lift our eyes up away from ourselves and onto you, our great and glorious God.
We pray it in Jesus' name. You do a little research on con artists and you get more than you bargained for. Everything from Irish sweepstakes, going out of sale businesses, scams of counterfeit goods, rental properties, natural disasters which open the door for scam artists.
The definition of a con artist is someone who intentionally misleads another person for the sake of financial gain. Several of the most famous con artists in American history included one man I came across in just reading on the subject who actually had a movie made about his scams during his criminal life. He passed off bad checks to the tune of about $2.5 million throughout about 26 different countries. He pretended to be an airline pilot which then allowed him to travel free. The courtesy of airline companies used to allow pilots to travel for free and he got away with it for quite some time until he was finally discovered and almost caught and so he changed his profession and his outfit to that of a medical doctor. He even landed a job for a while as a medical supervisor.
So if you're thinking about having medical major surgery, that will give you pause, won't it? He was eventually arrested but escaped from prison by masquerading as an officer. He eventually was offered his freedom from prison if he would help the government against scam artists and he helped them out and started his own fraud consulting firm and has since become a millionaire and an author.
Another con artist in the – those two aren't necessarily connected, okay. A con artist in the mid-1900s was one of the most interesting con men in American history. He actually made a living selling New York's public landmarks to gullible tourists.
He actually on several occasions sold Grant's tomb, posing as the general's grandson. He actually, if you can believe it, a wealthy businessman from out of state sold the original Madison Square Garden. He didn't own it. He sold it. He set up a fake office to handle his real estate scams, produced impressive forged documents to prove he was the legal owner. His favorite object to sell people was the Brooklyn Bridge. He sold it more than 100 times. He convinced his gullible victims that they would make a fortune by controlling traffic access to the bridge.
And on more than one occasion, police officers had to remove these unsuspecting new owners of the bridge when they showed up to try to put up toll barriers to start charging motorists. He was finally convicted of his crimes and since then his scam operations became the basis for the popular saying, well if you believe me then I've got a bridge to sell you. One interesting con artist from the early 1900s built and sold a device that he convinced people could produce a perfect counterfeit $100 bill. Since this was the early 1900s, people were fascinated with this new concept of a paper copier. His name was not Xerox if you're wondering.
He'll come up afterward and ask me. He was able to convince people to buy his device at the unbelievable price of $30,000. In 1910, that was a king's ransom. But he would tell people, he warned people that his device could only print one bill every six hours. And he actually designed it to actually spit out a sheet of paper on time, a perfectly forged or so they thought $100 bill every six hours. The device actually contained two genuine $100 bills.
But once they were spat out of the machine, it produced only blank paper. By the time the buyer discovered the scam, this con artist had used those 12 hours to get away. I went online and you can see one ad after another. They're constantly offering scams.
As soon as you pay the deposit and get the little kit that hardly has anything in it, you're left holding a bag, so to speak. Here's one I saw that said, earn a college degree at home, no tests, and no grades. I wish I'd had that 30 years ago.
I would have loved that college education. Another banner flashes, bad credit? No credit. No problem. You are pre-approved.
Another ad offers a laptop and a printer for only $39.99. Direct from the factory, just click here. Another promise is, earn $5,000 a week working from home part time. There's your job you've been looking for.
Just send in your money and they'll send you the kit. By the way, they've got a bridge to sell you to. Obviously, scam artists proliferate in any culture. As Micah the prophet warned, they dream up crimes while they're lying in their beds.
They can barely wait until morning light. They will take off to pull off their schemes. That's my paraphrase of Micah chapter 2 and verse 1. That's one thing to be a scam artist where people lose their money. It's another thing to be involved in a religious scam where people lose both their money and their spiritual equilibrium.
In other words, it's one thing for a victim to potentially lose his shirt. It's another thing entirely for a scam to cause people to lose their spiritual footing, even be deceived and lose their souls. Spiritual con artists proliferate as well as financial con artists. The apostle Paul has been telling Titus in chapter 1 how to put the church in good and effective order. It would be paramount to find men who would wear the mantle of a shepherd so that people would effectively be led honestly and authentically in a genuine spiritual manner. It's no wonder really to find at the end of the list of qualifications in chapter 1, Paul immediately launches into a warning for the church. He basically says, you're already in trouble. They have already infiltrated.
They're already turning everything upside down. So Titus, you need to get busy and hurry because they need genuine shepherds because these people are open to being scammed. Isn't it true that wherever the seeds of truth are sown, the seeds of deception will be close by? There's no such thing as a lawn without weeds.
Don't I know that full well now at this season? There's no such thing as a garden without weeds. Those who serve as genuine shepherds must not only sow the seeds of truth, but they must be willing to pull out the weeds of dangerous deceptions that Paul referred to as doctrines of demons, 1 Timothy 4. That is doctrines that seem otherworldly, that seem spiritual, but they are in effect misleading and they will lead someone through the doors of whatever religion or cult that is into the jaws of hell.
So Titus, understand why we need elders, not only for the positive effect of exhorting and sound doctrine, but also refuting those who contradict, Titus chapter 1 verse 9. And Satan just so happens to be a master at deception and so are his servants. He's really good at it. He has had several thousand years to practice on human beings.
From the Garden of Eden at the beginning of human history to the 21st century, he's literally honed his craft. He is the ultimate con artist. And his favorite scam of all, where many have been distracted and divided and even destroyed, as one author put it, is to drape his lies in the beautiful robes of truth.
And his followers end up with an empty bag and with great loss. He hides his deceptions behind smiling faces and encouraging promises. So Titus, you've got to be able to spot the lie and I want you to be able to spot the liar and expose them. So you're going to need to select men who will do the same with spiritual discernment and courage. One author writes of this task given to Titus, who was at that moment surrounded by spiritual deceivers. He writes, and how convincing these false teachers are, keeping their true nature carefully concealed even from themselves, which is an interesting point because you remember they are deceived themselves. They're going to one day stand by the bucket load in front of the Lord and they're going to say, look, didn't we prophesy in your name and didn't we cast out demons in your name and didn't we perform miracles in your name?
And Jesus is going to say, yeah, you did it all in my name, but I what? Never knew you. Never knew you.
You didn't work for me. He says, this author of false leaders, they deftly move among the elect. They move up through the ranks of authority and into positions of power. They are lacking biblical truth. They win friends and influence people by means of a charisma that's difficult to resist, even for those who despise falsehood. Nevertheless, a trained eye can spot them.
My question would be then, how do you spot a con artist? Well, Titus is going to be given several characteristics of false teachers and I want you to go back to verse nine again and that sort of sets the stage. As Paul writes to Titus, these elders must be able to hold fast the faithful word, why? So that they can exhort in sound doctrine, that's positive, and also refute those who contradict, that's negative.
Exhorting in sound doctrine is on the offensive, refuting those who contradict as being on the defensive, which includes offensive qualities as well. Those who contradict there in verse nine is a reference to false teachers, so how do you spot them? Paul gives us three descriptive characteristics of these men, and I'll add women, who lead the church astray and at least one or more of these, sometimes all three of them, will be evident if you will become alert and evaluate what they say in light of Scripture.
Let me give you the first one. Here's the first characteristic of a con artist. They are known as unaccountable personalities. Paul characterizes them in verse 10 when he writes, for there are many rebellious men. Now what does he mean? Well, that word translated rebellious is the same word found up a few verses earlier in verse six to speak of a grown elder's child at some point whose lifestyle, even though under still the authority of his father, is trumping his father's authority. He sets himself up against his father's authority, and having no regard for the authority of his father, he then discredits his father from serving as an elder.
That's the idea here. In the context here, this is a spiritual leader and teacher who claims to be under no authority, not even the word. He is equal to, if not above, the word of God. Whatever he speaks is infallible. Even though he might not say it that way, he expects you to believe it simply because he said it. His favorite phrases will explicitly state or subtly imply, God doesn't speak to you like he speaks to me, so you need to listen to me. God told me what I'm going to tell you. And you get the impression as a listener that, wow, he's got a direct line, God's speaking to him.
I wish I could have God speak to me. He's setting himself up as his own authority. He's effectively telling people, look, if you want to argue with God, you know that's going to be your problem. In other words, he becomes the spiritual authority.
He alone is the true source of spiritual insight. The Bible will be a resource for what he teaches, but it will not be the source of what he teaches. He might quote a verse or two. He might say certain words.
It's just a resource, though. This is part of his scam, to let you drop your guard and believe what he says after he quotes the verse. His favorite verse, by the way, as he sets himself up as the ultimate authority is something like 1 Corinthians 16, 22. I've actually heard men say that from the poet. Touch not God's anointed and do his prophets no harm. Isn't that a great verse? Touch not God's anointed and do his prophets no harm. And with that, you can't touch him, to quote that eminent theologian, M.C. Hammer. I just want to be relevant here for just a moment, okay? I'm dating myself, too.
The younger people are going, who? Hammer? You can't touch this guy. I mean, that verse is his shield. He's off limits. He's out of your jurisdiction.
You can't come close to him. And besides, he makes it very clear that nobody else is as smart as he is or as close to God as he is or as anointed as he is and whatever he says must be from God and so we're to just keep to our little selves. He's God's anointed. Somebody sent me a video link some time ago of a church service. I was so shocking that I actually watched it twice.
Several thousand people are standing and cheering what I was watching. A visiting evangelist visiting the pseudo evangelical church came on the stage with a huge oversized version of the Torah, the first five books of the Old Testament. The evangelist was claiming that he was about to perform some sort of special ceremony and he promised this pastor bishop that he would then receive a special anointing, an anointing that exceeded anything I've ever heard claimed. So they unrolled some of the scroll and they literally wrapped it around the pastor who stood there on the stage. They wrapped it around his body where he was hidden from sight and then after making all sorts of declarations that sounded slightly biblical and mostly mystical and even heretical, the evangelist had them unwrap the scroll and as the pastor stepped forward, they effectively claimed he was now uniquely anointed to speak with the same inspiration from God as the Torah was inspired by God.
He could never be wrong. What he said was tantamount to scripture. They even further had him seated in his pastoral chair and several men came and lifted him up over their heads and they paraded around the stage over their heads as the evangelist proclaimed that he was now effectively prophet and king and everybody's cheering. I sat there with my mouth open. How does that kind of blasphemy go unchecked?
How does any man become equally inspired with the text of scripture and then you just begin to think of false religions and that's exactly what's happening. I couldn't believe it. They were parading him around. You could do that with me.
That'd be fun. I'd enjoy the ride but you can't say I'm now king like Christ, prophet like Christ. One of the protective benefits of a plurality of spiritual leaders, shepherds, is that no one is ultimately unaccountable. In fact, in the Apostle Paul you'd think that Paul was taken to heaven, given to Torah, discipled by the Spirit of God. He saw the resurrected Lord. No, even Paul deferred to the counsel of other leaders in the church at Jerusalem according to Galatians chapter 2 and verse 2. But what makes spiritual deceivers all the more dangerous is the context here in chapter 1.
They are rising up from within the body, not outside. They don't show up and say, hey, I'm a false teacher. Can I come in? Because I'm going to deceive everybody I can deceive.
Horns and a pitchfork and a tail. You'd think, oh, I can spot that one. No, these are men and women who use the language we use, who are part of the fellowship. They're rising from within the body. These are professing believers, not unbelievers. And the deception of their teaching seems to have the endorsement of the church they represent, and people are cheering them on, and that's what's going here. In fact, Paul begins the paragraph by saying there are many of them, many.
There are a multitude of them. Titus, you've already got a problem. The church is already infiltrated.
You better move quickly. The deception is already at hand, and there are people who think that they are in fact speaking for God. Well, that's the first characteristic of a false teacher. They present themselves as unaccountable personalities. Secondly, Paul goes on to say, and I'll outline it this way, they're known by their empty promises. In verse 10 he describes them as empty talkers. This is the only time this adjective is found in the New Testament. It refers to someone who uses worthless words, someone who uses impressive language. It seems that it has substance until you critically think through it.
Solomon uses the idea in the Greek Old Testament translation, the Septuagint translates it this way. It's worthless. It's vain.
It's empty. It has no real substance. It's impressive language, but it has little or no solid content. These teachers are fluent, but they're shallow. In other words, they're great at making sermons and speeches, but when you evaluate the content of the sermon, they are biblically shallow, really at best and deceptively misleading at worst, lies draped in beautiful cloth. They're fluent. They have oratorical ability. In fact, one author said, you can often spot those who don't teach the truth by the way they so beautifully say absolutely nothing. Well put. They're slick. They're smooth. They're con artists.
You'll buy something from them and realize, wait, that was my shirt to begin with. And you try to pin them down on what they're teaching, some objective matter of biblical doctrine and truth, and they're going to wiggle around it. But what they do say has no lasting spiritual value. In fact, most of it has to do with temporary lifestyles here and now.
They deliver smooth words. What distinguishes Christianity at its heart is not necessarily its moral code, although it ought to impact that, but its truth about a creator who was rejected and denied by those he created in his image, and he then stooped to reconcile them to himself through his son by faith in Christ alone. See, Christianity at its heart, which makes it unique, is the gospel, the good news that God has reconciled the move toward man, reconciling them to himself through Christ. That's the distinguishing mark of Christianity. And everything then flows out of the context of who we are as redeemed, reconciled, clothed in the righteousness of Christ, children of God by faith alone in Christ alone. We have that kind of Savior. He is that kind of Lord. We have that kind of salvation. And what does the false teacher focus on?
Everything but him. How to get heaven now. How to get some of that gold pavement into our pockets now, because we ought to have it as children of God.
How to get healthy now. How to learn the secrets of a good self-image and a better marriage and a positive way of thinking and better parenting skills and all of that, which may be in fact true, but other religions teach those things as well. And if that is supposed to lead you to salvation, you'll discover those were empty words. Everything is taught but sin and redemption and Jesus Christ is the crucified atoning Lamb of God for sinners slain and even now the soon coming King for whom we wait. That's the good news.
That is the good news. However, the con artists that Stephen's been describing give you something you think you want, but then you realize it doesn't satisfy in the end. We'll return to this message next time because we don't have time to finish it today.
When we come back, Stephen will do a little bit of review and then bring the conclusion to this message that he's calling the character of a con artist. You've tuned in to wisdom for the heart. Our Bible teacher, Stephen Davey is the senior pastor of the shepherd's church in Cary, North Carolina. Here at wisdom international, we have a resource we're calling heart to heart magazine. It's possible that you've already received a copy of the magazine in the mail. If you haven't, I have a special message for you. We'd be happy to get a copy of this resource to you and let you learn more about it by actually holding it in your hands and reading it. Each month, you'll find articles designed to encourage you in the Christian faith. There's also a daily devotional for each weekday and one for the weekends.
These devotionals allow you to dive deeper into the scriptures for yourself. So if you've not received heart to heart and you'd like to, there are three easy ways that you can get it. If you have the wisdom international app on your smartphone, you can request a copy right through that app. There's a very simple form that you can fill out. You can also call us at the office. Our number is 866-48-BIBLE.
That's 866-482-4253. Finally, you could send us an email. We'd need your full name, your mailing address and your phone number and you can email that to info at wisdom online dot org. That's info at wisdom online dot org. By the way, that's the same email address you could use if you'd like to send Stephen a note.
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Box 37297, Raleigh, North Carolina 27627. Thanks for joining us today. Please come back next time for more Wisdom for the Heart. Thank you. We'll see you next time.
