Morning everybody. So today my title is Walking in
the Truth as we continue in Two Corinthians, and this is what
the apostle John wrote. He so he wrote, I have no
greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the
truth. Now, Christian parents have
great joy when they see their children walking in the truth.
If your children aren't yet Christians, don't give up on
them. Keep showing your faith with
them and showing your experience of God with them.
But the apostle John was like the apostle Paul.
They both had spiritual children that they'd led to the Lord who
become Christians. And five years later, Paul was
concerned about some of his spiritual children in Corinth
because there were false apostles who were entering the
church and spreading lies. And Paul was worried that his
spiritual children, the believers, were going to follow
these apostles and walk away from the truth.
So my message today is very topical.
Most of you are members of CCB and on the group, so I think you
know what I'm talking about this morning because of what happened
during last week. For those of you who aren't,
what happened during the week is that an unknown man and an
unknown woman claiming to be members of this church rang
individuals on the group inviting us.
Or at least this is a call we got, inviting us to attend a
prayer meeting on Tuesday at 10:00 PM.
Strange. And those who challenged the
callers, they the callers became offensive.
Sometimes we don't know who they were.
We don't know why they rank or how they got hold of the
numbers. And they pretended to be members
of the church and told lies. So this is very relevant to what
I'm going to be talking about this morning.
I believe it was a satanic attack, by the way.
You know, I believe it's causing some, it's caused distress to
some of us. I'm going to pray at the end as
well for, for us about lies in our lives.
So Paul wrote two Corinthians because of this problem of false
apostles and he mentions about these deceivers in some of the
earlier chapters in the book in the in in two Corinthians in
chapter 2, he said he he described himself as being a man
of sincerity, but he called these false apostles
unscrupulous merchants. 1 version colourfully describes
them and what they did like this.
They they said that they take God's word, water it down and
they then take it to the streets to sell it cheap.
Other versions call them hucksters or traders who preach
for personal profit and handle God's message as if it were
cheap. And so Paul compared his methods
with these deceitful workers. He said we use no hocus pocus,
no clever tricks, no dishonest manipulation of God's word.
He called them wealthy deceived. Well, he didn't call them
wealthy deceivers, but they were wealthy deceivers.
And he rejected the gospel of money, stating that Christ,
though he was rich for your sake, he became poor so that you
believers might by his poverty become rich.
And he's not talking here primarily about material wealth.
He's talking about spiritual riches about, as Jesus said,
about laying up treasures for for ourselves in heaven.
And in Chapter 9, which we had last week, thanks Skip, about
generous giving. Paul said this.
He said that one must give as he has decided in his heart, not
reluctantly or under compulsion. Interesting.
He says that because that's what was going on from these false
preachers, these false apostles. They were corrupt persuaders who
bullied believers into giving money.
So Paul describes the behaviour of these false apostles in
chapters 10, 11 and 12. Now don't worry, I'm not going
to read or try and talk about the whole of those 3 chapters.
So sorry. Before we get to that, I'm going
to talk about fake news. We've become familiar with that
term over the last few years. Fake news is when a person or an
organisation deliberately spreads false information.
And so we're going to have the great CCB fake news quiz now.
OK, so I'm going to show you a picture showing you the first
picture already. So some of you know the answer.
How is this picture connected to fake news?
And if you think you know your answer, put your hand up first
hand up gets the gets to answer. So what's this fake news about,
right? Yeah, it's the fact that 1000
Post Office workers were falsely accused of fraud, went all over
the newspapers, was popularised recently on ITV with Mr. Bates
versus the Post Office. It all happened 25 years ago,
and he's now Sir Alan Bates because he led the campaign to
bring it all out into the open, the lies that have been spread.
OK, So let me just get ready for the next one.
Number two, Question 2. How is this picture connected to
fake news again? It's 25 years ago.
Yeah, Kate, Kate, OK, Did you hear that?
Kate said that? And she actually said MMR.
She didn't just say MMR. She spelt that.
My second question was going to be, what is MMR standing for?
Measles, mumps, rubella. And there was a doctor called
Andrew Wakefield. He's in the picture here.
And he was doing research, but he believed that vaccines caused
autism. And he got a paper published in
The Lancet, which is actually the premier medical research
journal in this country. And he was shown to be a
fraudster. The paper was removed and he was
struck off the medical register. I think he's still doing this
stuff in America nowadays. OK, that's question two.
Well done. Good point for you, Kate.
And now let me just get ready for the next one.
This is A1 word answer. OK, what's this fake news COVID?
Oh, no problem there, right? Yeah, COVID has spread many lies
as a result of COVID. The idea that radio waves around
cell phone masts spread COVID. There was ATV evangelist in
America who claimed that his silver solution was a cure for
COVID. He got prosecuted over it and
found guilty of fraud. COVID led to lots of fake news
and on social media nowadays there's lots of fake news around
that and many people get deceived into reading fake news.
Especially now with AI, it's so much easier to get people
deceived in the physical world world, but it's very, very easy
to deceive them in the spiritual world.
And there's lots of spiritual deception taking place as well.
So what's the common word that we use to describe a person who
spreads fake news? That's one.
Yeah. Yeah.
Liar. You got.
Got it. Yeah.
Liar. A liar.
He Jesus called the devil a liar and the father of lies.
And Satan was the first created being to spread fake news.
He lied to Eve in the Garden of Eden and he's been spreading
lies ever since. So Paul prophesied to the church
in Ephesus about deceivers. He said I know that after my
departure fierce wolves will come in among you, not spurring
the flock, and from among your own selves will arise, arrive,
arise, men speaking twisted things to draw away disciples
after them. Many of you know that Libby and
I were in Zimbabwe for many years and we came across fake
money when we were there. In fact, the bank tellers were
taught how to recognise fake U.S. dollars.
They were trained to feel the dollar bill bills and hold them
up to the light to see the watermarks.
And after they they'd mastered the art of identifying real
notes, they didn't need to know about every single type of fake
that might come on board. All they needed to know was what
a genuine dollar bill really was and Paul used the same principle
when he was warning the Corinthians about false
apostles. The principle Paul was get to
know the genuine and you'll be able to recognise the facts.
If believers understood what a godly leader looked like, not
just looked, you understand, but was if they understand the
characteristics of godly leaders, then they'd be able to
recognise wolves who crept in disguised as sheep.
So Paul didn't go into great detail about these false
apostles in Two Corinthians. Instead, he describes, he
characterises genuine Christian leaders.
And he used his own calling, his own motivation and his own
behaviour to help the Corinthians understand the
difference between the fake and the true.
He described his calling, that is, that it came from God and
his spiritual experience, that that he'd shown signs and
wonders and in front of the Corinthians, and that these
proved his apostleship. He described his sufferings and
how God helped him to be perfected through his
weaknesses, how God gave him power, carried him through.
I will boast all the more, he wrote, all the more gladly of my
weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.
I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions
and calamities. For when I'm weak, then I'm
strong. And his boast is not about
himself. His boast is about God.
Through all this, and he talked about his servant hearted
ministry, Paul never abused the Corinthians.
He never demanded their money. Instead, he served them through
his sacrificial love. So I'm going to just try and
describe or try and compare how the fake and the true apostles
measured up. And I want to compare them using
Paul the apostle Paul as a model.
And the first item was about authority.
The false apostles considered themselves to be apostles
because of their worldly success, because they were
naturally gifted, and because they were forceful in their
personalities. They felt that these things
qualified them to be church leaders.
So they appoint themselves as apostles based on their
preaching ability and their outward appearances.
And they compared themselves all the time with other Christian
leaders and use themselves as a standard of perfection.
They bad mouthed Paul told the church that he was weak and that
he was a lousy preacher. They claimed that he wasn't a
true apostle and claimed that they were superior to him.
In fact, Paul uses in his book when he talk, when he describes
them, he calls them super apostles.
Not just apostles. He calls them super apostles
because they and, and this is sarcasm of the greatest order,
because they were exalting themselves.
And that this is what he wrote in Two Corinthians 10 with a
heavy degree of sarcasm. We wouldn't dare to say that we
are as wonderful as these other men who tell you how important
they are. He told the Corinthian church
that their existence, that their existence and the signs and
wonders that they'd observed were the proofs that he was an
apostle. Now, God doesn't just call
apostles. He doesn't just call pastors,
and he doesn't just call missionaries.
God has a call on every person's life.
Maybe it's God wants you to have a certain career, or he's going
to call on a job for you, or a ministry in the church or an
activity in the community. But knowing God's calling is
important and when God calls you to an area of life, he gives you
an anointing his Holy Spirit to equip you for that calling.
So I want to just raise the question in your in your minds
about what's my calling? What's the calling that God is
calling me to? Just have a think about that and
maybe talk to your friends or your family about it or ask God
to reveal His call for you. So let's move on to #2 which is
motivation. What was it that motivated these
false apostles in Corinth? It was self-interest.
They boasted about themselves all the time, about their
health, about their wealth, about their success.
But their main motivation was to gain followers who looked up to
them, who submitted to them. And their strongest motivation
was money. Getting their followers to give
them money was their main driving force.
And Paul's motivation was the complete opposite.
He didn't try to out boast the false apostles.
He wrote humbly about his spiritual experiences.
He spoke he reluctantly, he says several times.
He's only boasting reluctantly to share about his sufferings
and his weaknesses and his health problems and how God's
power has enabled him to endure and that he was supporting
himself. His motivation wasn't driven by
a desire to exploit his followers.
He just wanted to carry on building God's church.
That was his motivation. He said I will keep on doing
what I'm doing in order to cut the ground from under those who
want an opportunity to be considered equal with us in the
things that they boast about. OK, so that's motivation.
What about behaviour? So Paul described this false
apostle behaviour like this. Such men are false apostles,
deceitful workmen disguising themselves as apostles of
Christ. And no wonder, for even Satan
disguises himself as an Angel of light, so it's no surprise if
his servants also disguise themselves as servants of
righteousness. So they were pretending to be
apostles and deceiving people to follow them and disguising
themselves as servants of righteousness.
But there were really Lords of immorality.
And that's what Satan is. He disguised himself as a
righteous Angel of light. And the false apostles were just
like their spiritual father. They lied, they dominated, and
they exploited the followers, especially about money.
And Jude describes such people. He says that they are shepherds
feeding themselves and he condemned them for perverting
the grace of God into a licence for immorality.
And we'll see this, we'll see this later on.
But Paul was humble and he was sincere and he was loving and he
was servant hearted and the Corinas were like his spiritual
children. And he described himself as a
parent who was willing to spend and be spent for them.
He said, I seek not what is yours.
He wrote to them, I seek not what is yours, but you.
For children are not obligated to save up for their parents,
but parents for their children. Changing a bit, Nowadays parents
have to bail out the kids a lot of the time.
But anyway, that's OK, that's good.
But we hope that our children will look after us when we're
older. That's not always the case, is
it? So where are we?
So Peter wrote about these false teachers in his letter.
I put together 4 different translations of the same verse
here because I think it gives us a better understanding of the
character. Let me just read them.
These false teachers only want your money, so they will use you
by telling you lies. In their greed, these teachers
will exploit you with fabricated stories.
They will make up clever lies to get hold of your money.
They're only out for themselves. They'll say anything, anything
that sounds good to exploit you. So if that's a description of
the behaviour of these false apostles, let's look a little
bit at the teaching now. So the false apostles in cometh,
they were Jewish, we believe, and they probably held similar
beliefs to the Jewish believers who Paul mentions in Galatia and
who Paul met with in Jerusalem. And it's described in the book
of Acts. And these Jewish believers, they
belong to the Pharisee party, and they elevated their own
ideas and their own traditions above God's Word.
They taught. This is a quote from the book of
Acts, chapter 15. It is necessary to circumcise
Gentiles and order them to keep the law of Moses.
And that's probably what the false apostles in Glacier and in
Corinth were saying as well. And by doing this, they were
rejecting the gospel of grace that God had revealed to Paul
and to the other apostles, the other true apostles.
And Paul calls these deceivers, he calls them Satan's servants
and that their their description, their deception and
compared their their deception to Satan's deception of Eve in
the Garden of Eden. He described their teaching
covers like this. This is what he says about the
false teaching. If someone comes and proclaims
another Jesus than the one we proclaimed, or if you receive a
different spirit from the one you received, or if you accept a
different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it
readily enough. So the Corinthians had heard the
gospel that Paul breached. They believed it.
They trusted it and they'd received the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit had come into the hearts like we were talking
about earlier in the service. But afterwards, after they were
born again, they heard the false apostles.
They heard the preaching, and the preaching was about a
different Jesus. Don't know what aspect of it
was, but Jesus maybe just that he was a good man, I don't know.
But their preaching wasn't inspired by the Holy Spirit.
It was inspired by the spirit of this world and the beliefs
accepted this different teaching about Jesus and they were
deceived into into accepting a different gospel and they became
more like slaves, the disciples of these false apostles of
people that Paul called fools. He uses sarcasm again here.
He said for you put up with fools gladly since you
yourselves are wise. And I think he's speaking very
sarcastically here. You buried if someone enslaves
you or devours you. These deceived believers
consider themselves now to be so wise because of the teaching
they've accepted. But Cole considered them to be
slaves, slaves to strict religious laws and subjects of
powerful men Who he, who, who, who figuratively ate them for
dinner that they were devouring these believers.
So what is the pure gospel? It's a gospel of grace.
It's a gospel of Christ's apostles taught.
And this is just a a short summary, that Jesus died for our
sins and was raised from the dead.
Secondly, that salvation comes only by God's grace through
faith. And faith is when a person puts
their trust in Jesus Christ to be their Saviour only through
faith. And after a person believes
faith leads to good works that God recognises, good works by
themselves never lead to salvation.
Not the law, not giving money. Salvation is never the result of
our human obedience to the law. It's always God's gift.
It's always grace. So ever since Pentecost, Satan
has been trying to distort this gospel of grace.
And Jesus spoke about this. He told a parable, the parable
of the wheat and the weeds, as an illustration of how Satan
does it. We know his methods.
God's revealed it to us. So here's the story.
A farmer owned a wheat field and one day his enemy sowed seeds in
the farmers field. And in this in this parable, the
wheat's a picture of believers, but not just believers, it's a
picture of God's truth. And the weeds are not just a
picture of fake believers, they're a picture of false
teaching. And the enemy who's doing the
sowing is Satan. And the main lesson of this
parable is that outwardly the wheat and the weeds can look the
same. And the application of this for
us is that firstly, in our churches we have unbelievers as
well as believers. There are unbelievers who look
like Christians and you can't tell the difference from at the
outside at the moment. One day that difference will be
made clear, but you can't tell the difference.
And secondly, that God recruits false teachers to infiltrate
churches and spread lies. False teachers who twist Bible
verses so that they sound like the truth, so that we can't
distinguish easily between truth and fake news.
Fake lies. Well, not fatal lies, but lies.
Just lies. OK, Yeah, so we come to this.
So false teachers are like the weeds that the enemy planted
among the weak, among the wheat. And in recent years, the
prosperity gospel has sprung up in churches throughout the
world, just like the weeds started during the 1950's, the
modern rendition of the prosperity gospel.
Pentecostal preachers in the United States started to spread
this prosperity gospel and it spread rapidly in Latin America,
in Asia, and all over Africa as well.
And I can vouch for that, aided by religious TV channels and
nowadays social media. Lots of this on social media
nowadays. And the core message of the
prosperity gospel is that God desires all believers to have
material wealth and physical health.
And if you hear someone preaching that God wants you to
be comfortable and wealthy, they're preaching the prosperity
gospel. It's not the teaching of Christ.
Christ, who told us to pick up a cross and follow him, and to lay
it not treasures on earth, but treasures in heaven.
So the prosperity gospel has idolatry at its core.
It's a gospel of money. It directs people to worship
God, not for who he is, but for what he can do for me.
And it treats God like a cosmic vending machine.
It shifts the focus away from Christ suffering, away from
salvation by grace through faith.
And instead it focuses on me, my wealth, my health, and my
happiness. And it may sound appealing, it's
a modern day perversion of the gospel.
It's the 21st century version of a 1st century heresy, a false
gospel that Jesus, Paul, Peter, Jude all describe in the New
Testament. And the mechanism for the
prosperity gospel to work is the Word of Faith.
Now we believe in the word and we believe in faith.
But let me try and describe very briefly what they false gospel
preachers base the doctrine on of prosperity, which is Word of
Faith. They teach that in order to
obtain wealth and healing from God, followers must, and you've
probably heard this phrase, followers must name it and claim
it. They teach that God desires
believers to be prosperous, and they say that you can blame
these blessings by declaring that you already have the
blessing, like healing of money as if you've already received
it. Now there's some verses in the
Bible that say this as well, but it's a way that this is
interpreted and put into practise that matters not.
The texts that Jesus spoke about, Jesus spoke about this.
They say that believing this Word of Faith unlocks God, God's
promises, and that followers are encouraged to speak positive
declarations like I am healed, I am wealthy as if they've already
happened, using the power of the words, the Word of Faith, to
bring them into a reality. It's mine over matter stuff.
Prosperity. The prosperity gospel may sound
like it's biblical and didn't Jesus ask to say this?
Jesus said ask and it will be given to you.
He said unto now you've asked nothing in my name.
Ask and you will receive that your joy may be full Jesus.
But Jesus taught his disciples also to pray.
Our Father who art in heaven give us this day Our Daily
Bread. There's a difference between
asking God because of how gracious and merciful he is, and
demanding from God what is our divine right.
And there is another doctrine, the little God's false doctrine,
which says that we have got divine rights, we are little
gods. There's a world of difference
between letting your requests be made known to God through prayer
and Thanksgiving. Philippians 4/6 and demanding
material inheritance from God. Jesus said I'm come that they
might have life and they might have it more abundantly.
An abundant life here isn't so much about material and wealth
and physical well-being. It's about the gift.
This is how Jesus interpreted. It's about the gift of eternal
life. And false teachers have made-up
a lie that believers can use their faith to demand prosperity
from God. I believe, OK, I want to come to
another doctrine associated very often used with the prosperity
gospel. Well, it's called the seed faith
doctrine. It was first taught in 1947 by
ATV evangelist called Oral Roberts in America.
And the teaching is a twisted interpretation of a verse in two
Quintus 9. This verse in indeed teaches
that there is a blessing from God that accompanies generous
giving. But this verse is twisted.
Oral Roberts twisted the meaning of this verse to benefit
himself. He preached that money given to
the ministry. His ministry acted as a seed
that God would then multiply and give you back the prophet.
He gave you a gift back. It was known as giving to get.
It's a false belief. Copeland explained this giving
to get principle in this way. Listen this it's based on a
verse that Jesus said about giving up your house or your
family for God and will. It will lead you to do God give
you back a hundredfold and Copeland used Jesus statement
and he he built on to this prosperity teaching the seed
faith doctrine. He said this give her $10 and
receive $1000. Give $1000 and you'll receive
$100,000. It's a good deal, he said.
And it's estimated that she and he, Kenneth Copeland, are now
worth half a billion # million, half a million, half a billion
dollars. And thousands of other
prosperity preachers have followed the same false teaching
and are using it to benefit themselves.
So many people in Pentecostal churches and evangelical
churches are being drawn into this heretical teaching.
So 1000 Protestant churchgoers in the United States were asked
if they agreed with this statement.
The statement is this. To receive material blessings
from God, I have to do something for God.
In 2017, about 1/4 of them said that was true.
Five years later, about 1/2 of them said that that was true and
there were some other things. But basically it's it's this,
this is a slide showing that prosperity gospel is
infiltrating Pentecostal churches and evangelical
churches around the world. This is what the director who
carried out this, this research, his organisation very, very
solid. He said in the last five years,
four more churchgoers are reflecting prosperity gospel
teachings, including the heretical belief that material
blessings are earned from God. That is not the gospel of grace.
That is the gospel of works. It's the gospel of works, not by
works, lest any man should boast.
And it's especially prevalent amongst young people and amongst
the least educated church goers. So don't get us deceived by it
or associated false teachings. There's another doctrine of the
man of God doctrine that teaches subjection through heavy
shepherding by men who are we are to call them our spiritual
fathers. I won't go into that, but these
heresies are increasing and they will continue to grow as they
have been growing until Jesus comes going to scripture.
So I want to just land us now. So how to avoid false teaching?
First way is test the spirits. John urged believers not to
believe every spirit, but to test the spirits to see whether
they are from God, because it might be a lie from Satan and
his servants. And the best way of testing is
by knowing Scripture, checking the teachers out, and checking
their teachings out against the Bible.
And Paul preached this to the Bereans.
He said they received the word that Paul had preached.
So Paul had preached the word and they received it with all
eagerness. They'd never heard of God's
grace before, so they checked it out, checked out Scripture and
confirmed that what he was saying was true.
So don't just accept what preachers say, even if he says
it's an apostle. Check it out yourself or ask a
leader if you're not sure. Secondly, don't go by outward
appearances. Check character.
Check the character of those who are preaching or those who are
teaching. Beware of those who make
spiritual boasts. Don't be swayed by the stories
of experiences that they've had of God, of God revealing stuff
to them. New doctrines especially, or the
signs and wonders follow godly leaders.
Check out whether they are humble, whether they serve
others, whether they don't seek their own personal game.
I think this is my last slide. Beware of prosperity preachers
and also beware of prosperity preach preacher followers as
well. Paul spoke about the followers
here in this verse, but he warned about people when he was
writing to Timothy. He warned Timothy about people
who were depraved in mind and deprived of the truth, imagining
that godliness is a means of gain.
That's the keyword. Godliness isn't a means of gain,
not materially. He's talking about material
gain, not spiritual gain. And this is how the message
translates One Timothy 6. He says if anyone teaches a
different doctrine and does not agree with the sound words of
our Lord Jesus Christ, the words result in constant friction
between people of corrupt mind who have been robbed of the
truth and who think that godliness is a means to
financial gain. So he's talking about the impact
of this teaching on churches That causes division.
It causes constant friction between people of corrupt mind.
Be careful to the teachers that you listen to.
Many of those who on TBN and the God Channel and many who are on
YouTube are prosperity gospel teachers.
Some of those big name preachers like TD Jakes and Joyce Meyer
have now renounced some prosperity teaching.
But it's wise to be careful about what they preach because
millions of people are being robbed of the truth and now
think that godliness is a way of financial gain.
Prosperity teachings produce envy, strike malicious talk and
evil suspicion. I want to just pray for us right
now. Let's just pray.
Yeah. Heavenly Father, we want to
thank you for your word, Lord, thank you for the your spirit
that you give us to understand your word.
And we just recognise through your word that we live in a a
world which is dominated by Satan and that his lies run
through this world every day. Lord, thank you that you've
given us the weapons of our warfare, which is spiritual to
pulling down struggles. And right now, Lord, I want to
pray that you will, if we've got any strongholds, any lies in our
minds or in our lives, I pray Lord, that you will reveal that
to us and help us to pull down those spiritual strongholds.
Lord. And Lord, if we, if we've been
also concerned about not just concerned, but disturbed by what
happened this week on the what's up side, Lord, I pray that
you'll give us your peace and please watch over us and protect
us, Lord, in Jesus name we pray.