Good evening. Let's start tonight's
service with hymn number 36 from your hardback hymnal number 36.
A mighty fortress is our God. Let's all stand together. A mighty fortress is our God,
a bulwark never failing. Our helper He amid the flood
of mortal ills prevailing. For still our ancient foe Doth
seek to work us woe His craft and power are great And armed
with cruel hate On earth is not his equal Did we in our own strength
confide, our striving would be losing? Were not the right man on our
side, the man of God's own choosing? ? Dust ask who that may be ?
? Christ Jesus it is he ? ? Lord sabbeoth his name ? ? From age
to age the same ? ? And he must win the battle ? ? And though this world with devils
filled ? ? Should threaten to undo us ? ? We will not fear,
for God hath willed ? ? His truth to triumph through us ? ? The
prince of darkness grim ? We tremble not for Him, His rage
we can endure, For lo, His doom is sure, One little word shall
fell Him. That word above all earthly powers,
no thanks to them abideth. The spirit and the gifts are
ours through him who with us sided. Let goods and kindred go. This mortal life also, the body
they may kill. God's truth abideth still. His kingdom is forever. Please be seated. Good evening. We're going to read from Psalm
110 tonight, if you'd like to turn with me there in your Bibles,
a very familiar passage of scripture. A Psalm of David. The Lord said
unto my Lord, Sit thou at my right hand until I make thine
enemies thy footstool. The Lord shall send the rod of
thy strength out of Zion. Rule thou in the midst of thine
enemies. Thy people shall be willing in
the day of thy power, in the beauties of holiness from the
womb of the morning, Thou hast the due of thy youth. The Lord
has sworn and will not repent. Thou art a priest forever after
the order of Melchizedek. The Lord is at thy right hand
or the Lord at thy right hand shall strike through kings in
the days of his wrath. He shall judge among the heathen.
He shall fill the places with the dead bodies. He shall wound
the heads over many countries. And he shall drink of the brook
in the way. Therefore, shall he lift up his
head. As David was fleeing from Absalom,
he crossed the Brook Kidron and drank of that
brook. And in so doing, he pictured
what the Lord Jesus would do when he crossed the same brook
going to Mount Calvary. The difference was that by the
time Our Lord crossed that brook a thousand years after David
had crossed it. You could no longer drink from
it. It was a polluted creek that no one would drink from. And
so our Lord, it's a picture of our Lord drinking the cup of
sin on the cross and he drank it dry. and crossed the brook
and went to the cross. What a glorious hope we have
in knowing that he, like David, drank from that brook. Bob and Carla, good to have you
all here. They've been coming on Januaries, and they are here
now for the month, so we're thankful for that. want us to pray together
and remember the men that are coming for our conference and
and the services and. Next. Next Wednesday. Is that right? Yeah. Jennifer is going to have her
scans next Wednesday and we'll find out the results of the treatments
that she's been having. So if the Lord enables you to
remember us and pray for her. That'd be very much appreciated. Let's pray together. Our heavenly
father, thank you for anointing thy dear
son as the Christ to be our successful savior, drinking dry the sins of your people, going to the cross and putting
them away by the sacrifice of himself. Our merciful heavenly father,
what hope we have in being able to come before thy throne of
grace, looking in faith to him and his perfect completed work
of redemption. We ask father that you'd be pleased
this hour to send your spirit in power that you would make
us willing and that this would be a day of your power. As you would give us ears to
hear and that Lord we would find ourselves bowing before thee
and rejoicing in what you have done and what you've revealed
about yourself. Lord, we pray for Caleb and for
David and Todd and ask Lord that you would be preparing their
hearts with the messages that we need to hear. Pray for ourselves,
Lord, that you would prepare our hearts to hear from you. And Lord, that you'd be pleased
to speak and to save. Father, we pray for Jennifer
Ask, Lord, for your continued strength and grace and mercy
and healing. And Lord, we know you are able. We pray that you would give us
the grace to rest in knowing that all that you do is well
and right. Lord, we ask it in Christ's name. Let's stand together again. We'll
sing hymn number 28 from your Spiral Gospel Hymn book, number
28. God has mercy on whom he will,
and whom he will, he hardens still. To whom he will, he gives
his grace, and when he will, he hides his face. Let none despise
God's sovereign throne. He does what he will with his
own. It is his right to save or kill
according to his sovereign will. Yes, God saves some and others
leaves to reap the fruit of their own ways. In the eternal ages
past, God made his choice and it stands fast. Aware that I'm
a guilty man and that I'm in God's sovereign hand, prostrate
I fall before his throne ? A wretched, helpless, guilty one ? Lord,
if you will, you can I say ? Take all my guilt and sin away ? A
guilty sinner at your throne ? I beg for mercy through your
Son Now trusting Jesus Christ, God's son, I know that I'm his
chosen one. And God's eternal sovereign choice
makes this poor sinner's heart rejoice. Please be seated. Let's open our Bibles together
to 2 Peter 2. 2 Peter 2. And I would encourage you to read
the entire chapter. It's one message. And we're not
going to try to dissect it verse by verse. even in the weeks to
come because I believe what we need to know
of what the Lord's warning us can be understood from the first
few verses. It is a very serious and sobering
chapter in God's Word and cannot read it without finding oneself
particularly If God's called you to preach, you cannot read
it without finding yourself falling before him, pleading for his
help and his mercy. I suppose the greatest judgment
of all would be to be found to be a false prophet, and that's
what this chapter is about. In verse one of chapter two,
and I want us to see from this chapter, what is it that false
prophets do? And the answer to that is that
they deny Christ. And that's the title of this
message, Denying Christ. Denying Christ. Verse one, but there were false
prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false
teachers among you, who privately shall bring in damnable heresies. Interesting, the word heresy
there is the word that means to make a choice, to make a choice. Oh, when a man chooses his opinion
over God's truth and God's word, or when he thinks that he can
choose his salvation over God choosing him, that is the essence
of all heresy. So the Lord warns us in telling
us that false teachers will be among you, who privately shall
bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought
them." Now, let's stop right there for just a moment because
we know that if a person has been purchased by the blood of
the Lord Jesus Christ, they cannot be condemned. There's no way. We interpret
scripture from scripture and we know that if a man's been
bought with the price of the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ,
that man cannot deny the Lord Jesus Christ and end up like
the false prophets that are defined in this chapter. So, we must
understand that what these men are saying is true. is that they
are saying they've been bought with a price, they've been redeemed,
they're giving a confession of faith, but they're denying the
very essence of their confession. And what is that? I don't wanna
be guilty of that. I don't want you to be guilty
of that. To say one thing and to believe something else. To honor God with your lips,
but to have him far from you in your heart. to say amen, truth
Lord I believe, and then to choose one's own opinion over God's
revealed truth. That's what's being said here,
denying the Lord that bought them. They are making a confession
of having been bought, of believing, but if you If you listen to what
they say, they believe, you find out that they're actually denying
Christ. They're denying Christ, which
is the essence of all heresy. And verse two, and many shall
follow their pernicious ways by reason of whom the way of
truth The Lord Jesus Christ is the way of truth. I am the way,
the truth, and the life. Because they had no love for
the truth, therefore God sent them a strong delusion that they
might believe a lie. So men who reject Christ as the
truth and embrace a lie is who's being spoken of here. And through covetousness, shall
they with feigned words make merchandise of you whose judgment
now of a long time lingereth not and their damnation slumbereth
not. And then the Lord gives example
after example of how he sent his wrath and his judgment against
like things in the Old Testament. As I said, this is a very serious
and sobering warning with eternal consequences of judgment and
one to be considered very seriously. And I know for myself, and I
hope it will be also for you, that anytime the Lord gives us
a warning like this, Our first reaction is not to point our
finger to others and say, God, I thank thee that I'm not like
other men. Our first reaction ought to be to do a check of
ourselves. Lord, don't let this be true
of me. Lord, save me. Lord, deliver me. Lord, my heart's
deceitful. I can't know it. I'm prone to wander. Lord, if
you don't keep me, I'll be just like these, these men, right? It ought to cause us to cry for
mercy and see more and more of our dependence upon his grace.
So let that be our first reaction. Anytime the Lord gives us any
sort of stern warning about anything. Second, Let us also be careful
before we accuse others of being false prophets. It's a pretty
clear description of what the Lord gives as far as what it
is to deny Christ. We are cautious, are we not,
in embracing a man who professes to be a believer. We don't just
take a man's word for it. We talk to him and we don't want
to reinforce something that's not real and so we are cautious
before we embrace a professing believer as a brother. We are,
we ought to be. But we ought to be more cautious
of condemning one who we've embraced as a brother as a false prophet.
Be more cautious of that. So we don't want to find ourselves becoming critical
and judgmental against everybody because of these warnings. And
this warning that's throughout this entire chapter, you know
that it's repeated time and time and time again in God's word. The third thing that I would
remind us is that ultimately, ultimately this warning has gone
unheeded in every gospel church for the last 2,000 years. Ultimately, this warning has
gone unheeded in every gospel church over the last 2,000 years. Say, what do you mean by that,
preacher? Well, I don't believe that you will find a faithful
gospel church, I don't know of one, anywhere in the world that's
more than a couple generations old. Maybe three. I don't know of one. I know men
who are pastoring churches who claim to be carrying the torch
of the gospel as their predecessors were, but you listen to them
preach and they're not. They're not. So in order for those local assemblies
to have had God write Ichabod, the glory of the Lord has departed,
over their door, they had to succumb to this very thing that
the Lord warns us of. And here again, we look to ourselves
and we think, oh Lord, keep us not only in my lifetime but in
my children's lifetime, my grandchildren. Lord, don't Don't depart from
us. Don't let these damnable heresies
be brought in here, unaware. I fear if the Lord tarries, eventually
it will. It always has. It always has. But Lord, don't let it happen
now. Don't let it happen to us. This is, as I said, a very, very
sobering thing. Let us heed this warning with
fear and sobriety and humility and love. And let us not become like the
church at Ephesus. Turn with me to Revelation, just
over a few pages to Revelation chapter 2. The Lord Warn the
disciples. Disciples inspired by the Holy
Spirit warn the churches. Every letter is filled with these.
The examples of the Old Testament false prophets is innumerable. So this is not a, this is not
a, a veiled, you know, an unusual thing. It's a very common thing
that God has made a central warning for us. And the church at Ephesus
heard that warning and they heated it. They heated it. But notice,
and this is what we don't want to do, in heating this warning,
we don't want to fall heir to what the Ephesians did. We must
be warned and remain cautious and at the same time not become
cold and hard-hearted and judgmental because that's what happened
to Ephesus. Look at chapter 2 of Revelation. Unto the angel of
the church at Ephesus write, these things saith he that holdeth
the seven stars in his right hand who walketh in the midst
of the seven golden candlesticks. Now the stars are the pastors
of these seven churches mentioned here. And the seven gold, the
golden candlestick is the church. And the Lord warns a couple of
them. He said, repent or I'll take your candlestick down. You'll
no longer be a light. And these, of course, the number
seven is representative of all the churches of all generations.
And so in each one of these seven churches, we can see things about
ourselves. In verse two, I know thy works
and thy labor and thy patience and how thou cannot bear them
which are evil. And thou hast tried them which
say that they're apostles and are not and has found them liars
and is born and has patience. For my namesake, thou hast labored
and hast not fainted. That's a good thing. Nevertheless,
I have somewhat against thee, thou hast first left thy first
love. So being faithful and diligent
to this warning does not mean that we become unloving. We must
maintain both, right? That's pretty clear. Yes, as John said, we are to
try the spirits and see whether they be of God. And he's not
talking about spiritual beings that you can't see, he's talking
about preachers. Try them and see whether they be of God. because
many false prophets have gone out into the world. We see that
over and over, don't we? How do we try them? How do we
identify them? How do we know we're not? Churches that lose the gospel
don't lose it just like that. It's a frog in a kettle, isn't
it? It's a gradual. That's what he's saying. Look,
go back with me to our text. There shall be false teachers
among you who shall privately bring in damnable heresies. They're
gonna do it very, very slyly, very, very quietly. They're not
gonna make a big thing out of it. It's just gonna be a little
leaven, a little leaven. And a little leaven eventually
leavens the whole lump, doesn't it? So we have to be careful
for ourselves and we have to be prayerful and diligent for
our church that, that these warnings that the Lord has given us are
for us. I hear sometimes believers speaking somewhat shocked and and concerned
about the compromises that they see being made in religion as
far as embracing the things of the world. I could name a bunch
of them. It seems like every time we turn
around there's something on the news that this denomination has
gone this way and this denomination and the Pope has said this. And I think when they bring those
things up, that's not their problem. That's not their problem. Their
problem existed a long time ago. The problem is they don't have
the gospel. The problem is that long, long time ago, damnable
heresies came in privately and God wrote Ichabod over that entire
denomination and we ought not to be surprised of the of the
embracing of the world that they are so quick to do. You see, it's why we don't preach
against the sins of society. Accepting the sins of a society
only come as a result of having lost the gospel. In other words,
bad practice comes from bad doctrine. And so we need to be diligent
in preserving the truth of the gospel and that'll take care
of everything else. A church will not be tempted
to compromise its moral values. until first
it's compromised the gospel. And that's what our Lord is talking
about here. Denying Christ is compromising the gospel. And
that's what these false prophets and false teachers do. And all
the rest of that stuff just comes as a result of that. Oh, And notice in verse one that
the threat against the gospel does not come from the outside.
It doesn't come from the outside. It comes from within. So when Paul met with the elders
of Ephesus, In Acts chapter 20, he said, I know that at my departure,
grievous wolves are going to come from your own selves and
men shall arise and speak perverse things to draw away disciples
after themselves. So the destruction of the church
is pretty much like everything else. It always happens from
the inside, not from the outside. And that's true of our own lives,
isn't it? Oh Lord, you know, so many people
concerned about all those outward influences, you know, let's,
here's a lot more concerned about that Pharisee in here than I'm
in one out there. You know, we see it in our own nation,
don't we? infiltrate the education system,
compromise this and that, and in time, we'll break everything
down until there's no stability. And in contrast to that, when
we are attacked from outside, everybody bands together. And
that's true with the church as well. You know, if we are attacked
from outside, It doesn't do anything but strengthen us. It always
has when the church has received attacks from the world. It causes
the believers to bind together and become more certain and more
sure of who they believe and more diligent in preaching the
gospel and following after Christ. So we don't need to be concerned
about something out there. of destroying us. We need to
be concerned about something in here, don't we? And I remind you too what the
Lord said about it being necessary. This is gonna happen. I've watched it happen over the
years and it's amazing to me. The spiritual, I don't know what to call it,
But I've watched it happen many times and it's incredible to
me how someone promoting a false gospel can come in this place
and within 10 minutes I can watch them pick out the weakest, most
vulnerable sheep in all the flock. I watch them. and befriend them
and start talking to them and start embracing. That's spiritual discernment.
That's an evil spiritual discernment, but it happens. And the Lord said this, it is
necessary for heresies to be among you. God's gonna send them. You know, we don't run them out
in a rail. We don't, you know, we don't
get angry at them and confront them. Guard it against them. But it is necessary that heresies
be among you in order that those who are approved might be made
manifest. So here's the Here's the comfort
and evidence, brethren, of your faith, is that you're not drawn
away by that. You're not deceived. You're not
given to that. You won't follow that. And it's always been this way
in the church. Moses' problem was not Pharaoh. Pharaoh was defeated pretty easily.
Moses' problem was Aaron, building a golden calf, and Miriam, his
own sister, and Korah's rebellion against him in the wilderness.
That, you see, it happened from within. That's what, when God
said, I'm gonna wipe these people out, and we're gonna start over,
and Moses interceded for the Israelites, it wasn't because
of what Pharaoh was doing. or had done, it was because of
what was happening in the camp, in the camp. The persecutions that came against
the New Testament church only strengthened the church. When
they tried to stamp out the fire, it just spread the sparks and
it lit the gospel fire in other places. And yet Paul said, oh,
Alexander the coppersmith, he was a professing believer, has
caused me great harm, great harm. They've been beaten, left for
dead, shipwrecked, none of that, that's all right, but when God
God sends one within the church and they do great harm. David's problem wasn't Goliath
or the Philistines. David's problem was his own son,
Absalom. David didn't lose his throne
because of anybody else. We see that in our Lord's own
ministry, don't we? Not that his ministry was under
any threat of failure or that God would in any way write anything
other than glory and success over everything that he did,
but Judas. Judas was the instrument by which
the Lord was sold and went to the cross, wasn't he? So here's
what the Lord's saying. We see the example of it over
and over and over again. Turn with me to Jude. Jude. All of that now is just... We're gonna get to what it is
to deny Christ because that's the essence. That's the essence
of the false prophets message, the denial of the Lord Jesus
Christ. In Jude 1 at verse 4, there are
certain men crept in unawares who were before of old ordained
to this condemnation ungodly men, turning the grace of our
God into lasciviousness and denying the only Lord God and our Lord
Jesus Christ. Now, as I said, we see in the
false church, the lasciviousness that's come
in. They say they believe grace,
they say they've been bought, but I don't think that's the
real, that would not happen, that doesn't happen initially. When these ungodly men come in
and they turn the grace of God into lasciviousness, what they're
doing is They are accusing those who believe in grace as being
licentious. I hear it all the time. Well,
you're an antinomian. You advocating a lawless behavior. You're supporting licentious
living. And I can tell you that the temptation
that comes, and maybe it's not true for you, is to try to, well,
you know, what do I need to do to make sure people live right? But that's the accusation. They accuse believers of being
lawless. I believe what you believed I'd
live any way I wanted." That's the turning the grace of God
into lasciviousness. That's saying that when we preach
pure grace they want to add works to it and they use the accusation that
we are advocating sin to accomplish that end and these are ungodly
men who are turning the grace of God into lasciviousness. We preach salvation by grace
without works and they want to add works and
that is denying Christ. That is denying Christ. That the Lord Jesus Christ was
not was not sufficient, he was not successful. Something else
has to be done in order to make what he did work for you. You
got to have a certain level of works and moral behavior in order
to... Turn with me to Isaiah chapter
14. I don't have to say that we don't
advocate immorality. We don't, we hate our sin. When someone says to us, if I
believed what you believed, I'd live any way I want, our response
ought to be, I so wish I could live like I want. And yet what I would do good,
evil is ever present with me. how to perform that which is
good, I find that I cannot look to anything I do for the hope
of my salvation. I must look to Christ alone. I cannot deny him his glory and
salvation by trying to find some proof or some ground of hope
in my own life. You see, these false prophets
deny Christ. And it always is that way. Every
false prophet and every heresy that's ever crept into the church
and you can study them and there's a whole bunch of them and they
all have a little different slant. But without exception, without
exception, they all denied Christ. They denied the Lord Jesus Christ
in either his work or in his person. And it goes all the way back
to Satan's, you see, these are emissaries of the devil. These
are damnable men who bring in heresies unaware and they're,
it's his, oftentimes we consider Satan first manifesting himself
in the garden to Eve when he lied to her and got her to question
God and how his tactics has always been the same. But you know,
the revelation, God has given us revelation of Satan that goes
back further than that. In Isaiah chapter 14, you have
your Bibles open there. Verse 13, verse 12. How art thou fallen from heaven,
O Lucifer, son of the morning? How art thou cast down to the
ground, which did weaken the nations? For thou hast said in
thine heart, I will ascend unto the heavens. I will exalt my
throne above the stars of God. I will sit also upon the mount
of the congregation in the sides of the north. I will ascend above
the heights of the clouds. I will be like the Most High. What is the devil's motivation for sending these
false prophets? To strip Christ of His glory,
to deny Him He hates Him, He hates him. So all that we read
in our text back in 2 Peter 2 is summed up in this truth of the
false prophets and the false gospel deny the Lord Jesus Christ
in the glory of his work or in the glory of his person. Either
it does not believe in the sufficiency or the efficacy of the work of
the Lord Jesus Christ accomplished on Calvary's cross, or it does
not believe in the essence of his person as God. Faith, on the other hand, gives
to the Lord Jesus Christ all the glory in completing all that God required
to save his people. Faith believes. Faith will not
embrace the false gospel and will not promote a false gospel
because it denies Christ's glory. And And we believe that the Lord
Jesus Christ was successful in what he did. We believe that
he actually put away all the sins of all of God's people of
every generation and successfully redeemed them. When we say that
we've been redeemed, we're not talking about a redemption that
requires us to do something. We're talking about a redemption
that was accomplished by a successful redeemer. that he actually redeemed
his people. And we ascribe to him all the
glory for his person. We believe that he's the fullness
of the Godhead bodily. We believe that he possesses
all the essence of deity. We believe that he's absolutely
sovereign. We believe that he's eternal.
A lot of these heresies go back and they make the Lord Jesus
Christ to be someone that was created by the Father. No, he
is eternally God. And he's all-powerful, he's omnipotent,
and he's immutable, he doesn't change. He said, I'm the same.
Oh, you sons of Jacob, I change not. And that's the reason you're
not consumed. He's the same. So we give to
him all the glory in his work and in his person, and denying
Christ is what the false prophets do. In the Old Testament, the one
definitive test that was to be given to determine a false prophet
was the fulfillment of his prophecy. If a man stood and declared something
was of God and it didn't come about, then he was to be considered
a false prophet. Those who deny Christ, what do
they do? What do they do? They say that God loves everybody. Christ died for everybody and
God wants everybody to be saved. If that was true, everybody would
be saved. But at their own confession, they promote themselves and they
expose themselves as false prophets by their own confession. They
say that Christ died for everybody, but not everybody died for. The
vast majority of the people that he died for are going to end
up in hell. Do we need any other test? They're declaring something is
of God, but He wasn't successful and it wasn't
fulfilled. Christ's attempt to save everybody
was not fulfilled. They deny him as being the end
of the law for righteousness when they introduce works into
the gospel. When they say that, well, you
know, there's something that you have to do. There's a decision
that you have to make. There's work you have to perform.
There's certain things you can't do and must do in order to earn
favor with God. And in doing so, they deny Christ
his glory. They deny the very hope and truth
that the Lord Jesus Christ accomplished the work. He finished the work. When he said it is finished,
everything that God required for the salvation of God's people.
God made him who knew no sin to be made sin for us, that we
might be made the righteousness of God in him. So all of our
righteousness is accomplished in the person of the Lord Jesus
Christ. And when we believe on him, we cannot believe on him
and deny him at the same time. We believe that we've been elected
by grace. Romans chapter 11, verse five,
there is a remnant according to the election of grace. We
believe that salvation's all of grace. And if it's of grace,
it can no longer be of works. Otherwise, grace is not grace.
You can't mix the two. To deny Christ is to introduce
works into grace. We believe God elected us by
grace. We believe that the Lord Jesus redeemed us by grace. We didn't add anything to that.
We believe that he calls us. Paul said, when it pleased God,
who called me by his grace. So being made willing, as we
read in Psalm 110 earlier, being made willing in the day of His
power is a work of grace whereby the Spirit of God makes us willing
and causes us to confess and to come to Him and to not deny
Christ. We're kept. We're kept by the
power of God. We're kept by grace. We're sanctified
by grace. To say that there's something
that you can do to improve your sanctification, to improve your
holiness, that you can become less sinful and more holy before
God by something that you do is to deny Christ his glory.
Progressive sanctification is the denial of the gospel. Do
we grow in grace and the knowledge of Christ? Yes, yes we do. And as we grow in his grace,
we see more and more of our need for grace, don't we? Saved by grace. By grace you
save through faith, not of yourselves. The gift of God, it's not of
works, not of works. It's all of grace and he is all
the glory. Paul said, whatever a believer
can say, I am what I am by the grace of God, by God's grace. In Matthew chapter 22, there
was a lawyer who actually thought that he could
trap our Lord in his words. What arrogance, what pride. And
he asked him what was the greatest commandment of all and the Lord
said to love the Lord your God with all of your heart and all
of your mind and all your soul and second is like unto the first
to love your neighbor as yourself. And this Pharisee kept on The
Lord Jesus looked at him and he said, let me ask you a question. Let me ask you a question. What
think ye of Christ? Whose son is he? And the Lord
said, well, he's the son of David. And our Lord quoted from Psalm
110 that we read earlier. When he said, then why, if he's
the son of David, why then did David say, my Lord, or the Lord
said unto my Lord, sit thou here at my right hand until I make
thine enemies thy footstool. If he's David's son, how come
David called him Lord? And the scripture says, no man
was able to answer him. Neither did any man from that
day forward ask him any questions." The Lord Jesus clearly declared
himself to be God. Now the Pharisees are going to
get together and the only charge they can come up with is blasphemy. Blasphemy. Here A mere man has
made out himself to be God. Turn with me to 1 Corinthians chapter 12. 1 Corinthians chapter
12. Here's verse three. Wherefore, I give you
to understand that no man speaking by the Spirit of God calleth
Jesus accursed. Now, these false prophets, without exception, call Jesus
Christ accursed. So what do you mean by that?
They say the right, just like the ones in our text. They deny
the very Lord that they say bought them. So they can say one thing,
but if you dissect what they really mean, and here's what
I mean by when I say that the false prophets call Jesus Christ
accursed, being accursed, being accursed, is suffering the wrath
of God without any hope of redemption. That's what it is to be accursed.
It's to suffer the wrath of God eternally separated from God.
Now, what did the Lord Jesus Christ do? He suffered the wrath
of God on Calvary's cross. And what do they say? They say
he died for people who are going to be eternally separated from
God. So part of the judgment that the Lord Jesus Christ experienced
from God's wrath was with no hope of redemption, no hope of redemption. There's
people who are going to be eternally separated from God for whom Christ
died, for whom Christ died. That's calling Jesus Christ accursed. And no man can do that by the
Spirit of God. And no man can call Jesus Lord. Look at the
rest of this verse. And that no man can say that
Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Ghost. Say, well, they all
say he's the Lord. Yeah, it's kind of like that
sign out there on I-4 that says Jesus is Lord over Orlando. He's Lord over a whole lot more
than that. But they don't believe that. They don't believe that he's
sovereign. They don't believe that he's
omnipotent. They don't believe that he reigns and does whatsoever
he wills with the armies of heaven and the inhabitants of the earth.
They don't believe that his hand cannot be stayed. They deny the very essence of
deity by making him dependent on something that we do in order
for him to be able to save. And that's the essence of these
false prophets that we're being warned to identify and to avoid. Men who deny Christ. They deny Christ. They rob from
the Lord Jesus Christ his glory and salvation by denying either
his work or his person. And faith gives him the glory
for having accomplished all the work, and gives him the glory
for having to be God himself, the fullness. No man can call
him Lord, but by the Spirit of God. When we say he's Lord, we
mean he's Lord. He's Lord. Amen? All right, our Heavenly Father. Lord, keep us, protect us. Lord,
don't allow us to allow any leaven into the glorious truth and simplicity
of your gospel, either in our hearts or in our church. We ask
it in Christ's name, amen. 186, let's stand together. The church's one foundation is
Jesus.