If you pay attention to the news, it’s easy to
believe that Christianity is in a state of decline. It seems like every
month, if not more often, there’s a poll someplace that has negative news about
Christianity. There are fewer people who believe in God, fewer people who
call themselves Christians, fewer people who attend church regularly. If
you believe all those polls, you’d have to think that Christianity is on a
downhill slide and that there’s not much we can do to stop it.
And if you look at society, you might conclude that’s
right. We don’t notice it so much here, in small town South Dakota, but
there are places where being a Christian results in being looked down
upon. And that’s especially true if you’re open about your faith and try
to share it with others. A lot of people
say they’ll tolerate your faith, as long as you keep it to yourself. But
they don’t want you to be too public with it.
And then, too, you’ll see all kinds of pseudo-religions out
there. People whose faith can be found in Mother Earth, or karma, or in
some sort of vague “spirituality”. They believe in something, but a lot
of times they, themselves, are not really sure what it is. But whatever it is, it is not the divine Son,
Jesus Christ.
When we see that kind of thing, it’s easy to get depressed
about the future of our faith. But you know, there’s nothing really new
about it. The people of the church of
Thessalonica were apparently concerned about these same things. And Paul
writes to them to tell them how to deal with it.
Paul says they should not “become easily unsettled or
alarmed” at the fact that there was false teaching out there. They should
not even be unsettled or alarmed if the people spreading that teaching claimed
to be representing Paul and his associates. He warns them not to be
fooled by it, but he also tells them to not get overly upset about it, either.
And Paul tells them why they should not get too upset about
this stuff. He says, look, we knew this was coming. In fact, he says, I told you this was
coming. Paul says, “Don’t you remember that when I was with you I used to
tell you these things?” He tells them, this is not unexpected. We knew this would happen.
But there’s another reason the Thessalonians were not
supposed to get too upset about all this. Paul tells them that,
ultimately, these false teachings and false teachers will not prevail. It might look like they’re going to, for a
while, but they will not. Eventually, they will be defeated. He refers to those who spread false teachers
as representing someone he calls “the lawless one”. And Paul says, “The lawless one will be
revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will overthrow with the breath of his mouth and
destroy by the splendor of his coming.”
But Paul does warn them that
it’s going to be tempting to follow those false teachings. He also says
this, “The coming of the lawless one will be in accordance with how Satan
works. He will use all sorts of displays of power through signs and
wonders that serve the lie.”
Does any of this sound familiar? Because there are a
lot of false teachings out there, and there are false teachers, too. And
a lot of those false teachings are things that sound really good. They can be really tempting. And if
we’re not careful, we can find ourselves falling for them.
You’ve probably heard some of them. “Well, you know,
a loving God would never allow people to go to hell.” “Well, it really
does not matter what you believe, as long as you’re sincere in your
beliefs.” “Well, all that really matters is that you be nice to
people.” “Well, you can do whatever you
want, as long as it does not hurt anybody else.” “Well, the only
religion you really need is kindness.” “Well, it does not matter what you do in
your personal life, as long as your public opinions are right. Give to
the right causes, support the right laws, vote the right way, and what you do
or what you believe privately does not matter.”
I’m sure most of us have heard at least some of these, are
some variation of them. And of course, this is not a comprehensive list
by any means. There are all kinds of
false teachings out there. And some of them are spread by famous people
who seem like really nice, really good people.
But they’re all designed to do the same thing. They’re designed to
lead people away from God and toward something else. Some watered down, mild, milquetoast version
of niceness. A method of living that
allows us to do the things we want to do and call them okay, regardless of what
God might have had to say about them.
But again, we should not be too upset about this. We
should be aware of it, of course. But
all of this is to be expected. Paul told us it would happen two thousand
years ago. Jesus said it would happen,
too. In fact, Jesus predicted they would come in exactly the way we’ve
talked about. In fact, if you’ve ever
heard that phrase, “a wolf in sheep’s clothing”, this is where it comes
from. In Matthew Chapter Seven, Verse Fifteen, he says, “Beware of false
prophets. They come to you in sheep’s
clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves.”
In other words, it’s just like
we were saying. These false prophets, these people who spread all these
false teachings, will do it in a way that sounds really good. They’ll
sound like they’re really nice people who just want everyone to get along. And what makes it really deceptive is that
there is truth in it. Of course God wants us to show love. Of course God is in favor of kindness. But Jesus did not tell us that we should all
just get along. There’s a lot more to
Jesus’ message than that.
Jesus is the one who told us to
go the extra mile. Jesus is the one who told us to show love even to our
enemies. Jesus is the only who told us to pray for those who persecute
us. Jesus is the one who told us that if someone wants our coat, we
should also give him our shirt. And of course, Jesus gave us the ultimate
example of doing all those things and more when he went to the cross, dying for
things he had not done, dying to save us from suffering the consequences of our
sins.
So what should we do? We should do exactly what Paul
told the church at Thessalonica. “Stand firm and hold fast to the
teachings” that have been passed on to us. In other words, stay faithful
to the word of God and to the gospel of Jesus Christ.
When we hear these false teachings, and when they sound
really good to us, we need to go back to the Bible. We need to ask, “Is
that what the Bible says?” “Is that what
Jesus taught?” Because, again, a lot of
these false teachings do sound really good. They sound really persuasive. But if they don’t agree with God’s Word, if
they don’t agree with the gospel of Jesus Christ, then they’re not true, no
matter how good they might sound.
You and I have access to the truth. We need to make
use of that access. We need to make sure
we are not fooled by the false teachings of the false teachers of the world.
And of course, we need to do more than that. We
should not keep that truth to ourselves.
We need to share it with others. We need to do what we can to keep
others from being fooled by those false teachings. After all, if they
sound good to us, how much better will they sound to someone who does not have
a background in Christianity? How much better will they sound to someone
who does not know what the Bible says and does not know the gospel of Jesus
Christ?
Now, I’m not saying we need to go out and point a finger in
someone’s face and try to force the gospel on them. Jesus never did
that. What did Jesus do? Jesus said, here’s how it is. Here’s the truth. You can choose to believe it and have eternal
life. Or, you can choose not to believe it and suffer the consequences. If you have sincere questions, I’ll be happy
to answer them. But if you don’t want to
believe the truth, well, that’s your choice.
I think that’s the attitude you and I need to have.
We know the truth. We need to share it
with people. But if they choose not to
believe it, that’s their choice. There’s not much more we can do.
Except for one thing. And really, it’s probably the
most important thing of all. We can pray.
We can pray that God will bless our efforts. We can pray that God will touch people’s
hearts. We can pray that God’s Holy Spirit will break down someone’s
resistance. We can pray that God will
show up for them in a way that they simply cannot deny. We can pray that
God will do what we cannot do.
Because God can. God can do that. God can do anything. In fact, that’s
the only way anything is going to happen--with God. You and I cannot
bring anyone to faith by ourselves. We
can only do it if God chooses to work through us.
There’s a lot of false teaching out there. But don’t
let that alarm you. It’s to be
expected. Besides, we know that in the end, God is going to win.
What you and I need to do is simply stand firm and hold fast to the teachings
of God and of the divine Son, Jesus Christ. And then, we need to do what
we can to share those teachings with others.
If we do that, God will take care of the rest.
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