Good Morning All,
2 Peter 2:1a &3a, “But false
prophets also arose among the people…. And in their greed they will
exploit you with false words.”
Years ago, a friend of mine used to do
incredible impersonations. He was good
enough that, over the telephone, you wouldn’t be able to tell for sure who it
was. It was really quite amazing. The voice pattern, the inflections, the
pronunciations were all very accurate.
It made me wonder how often we trust that
the person on the other end of the phone is who we think it is. Oh the likely of someone trying to mislead us
is so small that it will never happen; but could you be misled by someone? If someone could sound just like a friend or
an acquaintance, how far could they go to fool you? What do we look for when we trust our ears
and what we hear?
The first is to recognize the voice. When we hear someone that we know, trust and
respect; we tend to believe what they say.
The next is probably familiarity with the message. If the person we trust is simply re-stating
some prior truth or expanding on it we would probably trust that to be
true. After someone we personally knew,
we probably trust someone from an institution that we trust. It might be a university or college or some
other group like that. If the speaker
has a title after his name we tend to trust them more. There are many criteria which we follow but
when do the alarms start going off? When
do we start to question what is being said?
In our verse, we contracted a longer
passage down to the main elements; false prophets and the exploitation by false
words. Scripture warns us that there
will be many who do this. Even at the
time of the writing of the Bible there are already false teachers spreading false
doctrine. So how do we know the truth
from the falsehoods?
The apostle John tells us to “test the
spirit”. We need to see if it sounds
like what we have already been taught in the past. If someone comes up and says they have
discovered a whole new way to interpret Scripture; it is going to be a false
teaching. We may have to apply the
teaching in a new way but it is still the same teaching we have always
had. If this teaching does not fit with
anything else in Scripture or it contradicts Scripture; it is a false teaching. If it denies one of the basic truths, it is a
false teaching. So if it rings false to
us; it probably is false.
God’s message to us is simple. Jesus died to pay for our sins. This we receive by faith. It allows us to stand righteous before
God. As God declares us righteous, we
are free from the devil and the burden of the law. We are free to live the life that God wants
us to live. We live in his holy presence
with thanksgiving and praise; asking him to meet all our needs and calming all
our fears. Since God has reconciled us
back to him, God wants us to reconcile with our neighbor and to befriend and
aid our brother in need. We are to live
out our life in joyful expectation of God keeping his promise of eternal
life. This is the basic Christian faith;
any variance from this is probably a false teaching.
It might sound good but it probably
isn’t. Listen closely, trust God’s
spirit to guide you as you listen and hear the impersonators teach for false
greed and avoid them and their lies.
Dear Father, give us a discerning heart as we listen to the noise
of the world and the lies with which it attempts to deceive us. Keep your Word strong and it proclamation
true. Hold us safely in your arms and
protect us from all evil. In Jesus’
precious name we pray, amen.
God’s
Peace,
Pastor Bret
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