Well, good morning, everyone.
If you would open your Bibles with me to Book of Mark, we're
gonna continue our study this morning of Book of Mark, chapter
eight. Before we begin, let's bow together in prayer. Our Father, we bow before you
this morning, coming into your courts with praise and thanksgiving.
Father, how can we begin to praise you enough for your work of redemption
for sinners like we are? Rebels against you, yet you purpose
to save a people through the obedience and the sacrifice of
your son. Father, how can we ever praise
you and thank you enough How can we ever begin to thank you
for all your mercy and your grace to us that has given your people
everything in the Lord Jesus Christ? And on top of that, how
you blessed us materially, physically. Father, we thank you. We beg
your forgiveness for the times that we murmur and complain and
are not thankful as we should after all that you've done for
us and all you've been to us. And Father, I beg of you that
you would, one more time this morning, bless us with your presence
and enable us to worship you this morning in spirit and in
truth. Enable us to see Christ set forth in your word and to
believe him, to rest in him, to have our souls thrilled at
another sight of him. I thank you, Father, for how
you've blessed your word here in this town for so many, many
years. And Father, beg of you that you
would not leave us alone now, but that you may be pleased,
Father, to continue to bless your word, continue to call out
your people, continue to have a place established here in this
place that is a lighthouse of your mercy and your grace that
would call sinners to our Lord Jesus Christ, that would feed
and edify and comfort your people. And Father, We pray a blessing
for those that you brought into the time of trouble and trial,
heartbroken and sickness and confused, don't know what way
to go. Father, bless. We pray especially for the family
of our brother, Ed Sparks, that you would bless them especially
at this time of sorrow and loss. Now, Father, all these things
we ask and we give thanks in that name which is above every
name, the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. I've titled our lesson this morning,
Beware of False Doctrine. I want to read my text and come
back and make some comments on it. Beginning in Mark 8, verse
14. Now the disciples had forgotten to take bread, neither had they
in the ship with them more than one loaf. And he charged them
saying, take heed, beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and
of the leaven of Herod. And they reasoned among themselves
saying, it is because we have no bread. And when Jesus knew
it, he saith unto them, Why reason ye, because ye have no bread?
Perceive ye not yet, neither understand? Have ye your heart
yet hardened? Having eyes, see not, and having
ears, hear ye not? Do ye not remember? When I break
the five loaves among the five thousand, how many baskets full
of fragments took ye up? They say unto him, Twelve. And
when the seven among the four thousand, How many baskets full
of fragments took he up? And they said, seven. And he
said unto them, how is it that ye do not understand? Now here the Lord is talking
about the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod. In scripture
leaven, you know this, is a picture of sin. And the particular sin
that the Lord's warning us about here is false religion. Now any
form of religion, under whatever heading you might put it under,
that is not Christ alone, that's sin against God. Because it lies
on God, and it's also sin against man. Because you're telling man
a lie if they believe it, they're gonna go to hell believing it.
So it's a sin against both God and man. And our Lord here uses
the example of Levin to warn us, to warn the church as a whole,
but particularly a local church, to warn us of the sin of the
doctrine of false doctrine. And he uses leaven because what
does leaven do? Leaven puffs up, doesn't it?
You put leaven or yeast, just a little bit of it in a ball
of dough, and it's gonna make that dough rise so it can make
nice, soft, fluffy bread, you know? Well, that's what the sin
of false doctrine does. Just a little bit of it goes
a long way, and it puffs men up. And that's just, that's a
lie. Anything that puffs us up is
a lie, because you can't get any more low down than we are
by nature, can you? And the Savior warns us, now,
don't compromise even a bit. Don't partake of even a drop
of this false doctrine, or it'll puff us up. And I can't tell
you how much I do not want that to happen to us, how much I pray
about this and how much I'm watchful for this, about false doctrine.
You know, I can't think of anything more repulsive than puffed up
religious people. I mean, how ridiculous is it
for any son of Adam to get puffed up about anything? But especially
about religion that's supposed to humble us before our God,
that would puff us up, it's just foolish. Now, there are three
specific types of false doctrine that the Lord warns us about. He warns us here about the 11
of the Pharisees and of Herod, but if you look back at Mark
chapter, or Matthew, excuse me, Matthew chapter 16, Matthew gives
us a detail that Mark does not give us. There's a third warning
that the Lord gives here, Matthew 16, verse six. Then said Jesus unto them, take
heed and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees. So you put this together, what
the Lord warns us about is the leaven, the false doctrine of
the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and Herod. Now I want us to look
at these three forms of false doctrine so that we're warned
about falling into them because sometimes it just hits you on
the head, it's so obvious it's false doctrine, you're not gonna
fall for that. But it can be very deceptive.
That's that little drop. Just that little drop of leaven
that you put in that ball of dough, before you know it, it'll
spread through the whole lung. So first, there's the false doctrine
of the Pharisees. Now the Pharisees, they were
the self-righteous people. They were the ones who, by their
religion, what they believed, is they earned their righteousness.
by keeping the law, by obeying the law, by following all the
ceremonies and doing everything very strictly just right. The
Pharisees were the religious conservatives of the day. I mean,
they were so strict about their traditions and their ceremonies. I mean, they wouldn't deviate
a bit. They're strict conservatives. They were so dogmatic. I mean,
they would not ever think of compromising. their traditions
and their ceremonies. And they're going to throw you
in prison if you do. I mean, they're serious about this now.
The word Pharisee, it means to be separate or to be distinguished. They thought they were better
than everybody else. They thought they were distinguished
from everybody else because they had separated themselves from
all the error that they saw going on in the nation Israel at that
time. Now if you think about it, that
description can sound a whole lot like you and me. We're very
dogmatic too, aren't we? I hope we're being dogmatic about
not compromising the gospel of God's grace. I hope it's that
we're being dogmatic about never compromising the glory of Christ,
but we're dogmatic just like those Pharisees were. And there's
a way that we want to be separate too. Come ye out from among them
and be ye separate. We have a desire to be separate
from false religion. I'm just not gonna associate
myself with false religion, force myself to sit under it, or invited
to be preached here and force you to sit under it. I'm gonna
be separate from that. Now, I hope we're never separate
from people in the sense that the Pharisees were. I don't want
us to be separated from people, from the rest of the world, Because
we think we're better than everybody else. No, sir. No, sir. That
attitude is contrary to the gospel. It's contrary to grace. It's
contrary to total depravity. If all of us are totally depraved,
how can I think I'm better than somebody else? Can't be. Can't
be. But still yet, I want to be separate.
I want to be separate from that false religion and not compromise
with it a bit. So in a way, that kind of sounds
like the Pharisees, doesn't it? But here is the big error that
the Pharisees made in their doctrine. They added to God's word. They
added to it. They added the tradition of the
elders and they treated them just like the word of God. They
treated them to have equal authority and equal weight and equal commandment
as the word of God. They didn't treat them as the
thoughts of men or the traditions of men. They treated it equal
to the word of God. Just a few weeks ago, we looked
at this example. The Pharisees were upset that
the Lord's disciples didn't wash their hands before they ate.
Now that washing your hands before you ate, that was a religious
tradition to them. And they made it, you won't find
that in the word of God, but they added that to the word of
God and they made washing your hands before you eat or washing
your hands when you come back to your house from being out
in the world, They made that a matter of righteousness for
your soul. Like you're somehow washing dirt off your soul. You
wash that dirt off your hands, you're not gonna get that sin
into your body. Their tradition had become just
as important as if it was a commandment in God's word. Now, by all means,
wash your hands before you eat. I mean, washing your hands is
a real good idea. We're getting into cold and flu season, wash
your hands. But it's not gonna make your soul clean. It's not
gonna wash sin off of your soul. That's something they added to
God's word and put themselves and other people in bondage to
it. Now that's what they did, and I would warn us, let you
and me be careful. Maybe this idea of washing your
hands before you eat, that's become a matter of righteousness.
Maybe a man, they highly, highly respected, first came up with
that. And they just did it because he said so. and then they just
kept going until suddenly it's equal to anything you find in
the word of God. Well, let's be careful you and
I don't do that. Now let's be careful. Let's not
take the thoughts and ideas of men who we really respect and
make the things that they said and did something now we have
to do in order to be saved. You know, let's make sure now,
oh, you gotta do this just like Brother So-and-so used to do
it or you're not having a true worship service. Now let's be
careful now. Let's be careful. We can never
allow our religious traditions to become a matter of righteousness.
Righteousness is found in Christ alone. And you see how somebody
can take a good idea and just get that dropped. That's a good
idea, let's do that. And suddenly it spreads and spreads
and spreads till it's a matter of righteousness. It'll eventually,
if that happens, eventually spread through the entire lump of the
local church, and sooner or later, it'll kill it. Because now we've
made something that man does, something of our doctrine, our
teaching, our belief system, we've made it a work that has
to be done in order to be saved. And for long, our whole doctrine
will be all works and no grace. It'll be all man and no Christ. So beware, beware. And I tell
you the way we can avoid falling into the trap of the Pharisees
is to stick strictly to the word of God. Strictly to the word
of God. Don't add to it. Just take the
word and preach it as God gave it to us. Just take the word
and read it and believe it as God gave it to us. And if you
don't understand it, don't add to it. Just keep reading, just
keep praying, just keep listening for long. God will answer our
question. He'll give us an understanding
of it. Just preach and believe only the word of God. Don't fear
off of it a bit and we'll never fall into this error of the Pharisees
to add to the word of God and end up adding our works to salvation. If that would happen to this
place in my lifetime, I can't even begin to tell you
how heartbroken I'd be. Let's pray that God keep us from
that. Well, second, there's the false doctrine of the Sadducees.
Now, the Sadducees, they're the religious liberals of the day.
The Pharisees thought pretty much everything goes. You know,
as long as you're religious, it's all right. You know, if
you're religious, you know, it's all right. Just like people today,
right? As long as you're religious,
as long as you call yourself a Christian, as long as you say
the name Jesus, then we're all saved and everybody's gonna meet
in heaven. The Pharisees thought, or the
Sadducees, excuse me, the Sadducees thought any kind of so-called
faith was okay. As long as you didn't get too
dogmatic, it wasn't grace alone, by faith alone in Christ. As
long as it wasn't Christ alone, everything else is okay. Anything
other than Christ alone was fine with the Sadducees because there's
no absolutes within. There's just no absolute truth
within. There's just no truth, no set
of beliefs that they wouldn't compromise to get along with
folks. I mean, they'd compromise with anything. The Sadducees
hated the Pharisees, but now, they'd compromise to get along
with them to put Christ to death, wouldn't they? Now, they pretty
much compromised with anything as long as it wasn't salvation
by grace alone. Now, here's the thing about the
Sadducees. They thought they knew better than God. Isn't that
man's nature? They thought they knew better
than God. And the proof of it is they subtracted from the word
of God. They would say, well, I know
God said that. I know that that's in the scriptures,
but I don't see how that's possible. That can't be. So I won't believe
it. Even though they saw it was in
the word, they just took it out of it because they didn't believe
it. And the example is the Sadducees did not believe in the resurrection.
Now the Old Testament plainly tells us of the resurrection.
There were people who were raised from the dead in the Old Testament,
but the Sadducees, They couldn't understand how can a dead body
be given life again? And especially after somebody's
died and decayed and gone back to the dust, how could they ever
be raised again in their body? Job said it would happen, but
they said, I mean, it's in the word of God, but I don't see
how that can happen, so I won't believe it. And they subtracted
the resurrection from the word of God. They subtracted the resurrection,
something that's plainly taught in the word of God, they subtracted
it. from their teaching and from
their preaching. You know people today, well, they don't understand
electing love, electing grace. They don't understand the new
birth. They don't understand how is
it that Christ could die only for God's elect. They don't understand
that. So you know what they do? They take it out of their preaching.
Other things they say might be true, but they've subtracted
from the word of God. and when they've done it, they've
ruined their whole message. The religion of the Sadducees,
it's the religion of the free will Armenians today. That's
who they are. You know, God's word plainly
says, God elected a people to save. Jacob have I loved and
Esau have I hated that the purpose of God according to election
might stand. Well, they don't like that. I mean, they don't
like it a bit. They want their chance to be
saved. So you know what they do? They
subtract that from the word of God. They just don't preach it.
They don't teach it. The closest they'll come to saying
anything about election is, well, election just means how God dealt
with the nation Israel. It's not electing a people into
salvation. They subtract. You think about
this now. They subtract God's electing
love from their message. Then what do they got to preach?
Because everything else hangs off that, doesn't it? God's word
also plainly tells us that Christ died for God's elect and only
God's elect. Christ said, I'm dying for the
people that the father gave me to save, that he put in me. And
the sins of those people and the sins of only those people
were completely and utterly put away by the blood of Christ. So those people shall be saved. I love to say that. I love to
think about that. I love to read that. I love to
hear that. I want that to be in every message
that I ever preach and every message that I ever hear. It's
the blood of Christ that put away the sin of everybody the
father gave him to save. And there's no chance that they
could perish. But these Armenians, now they
don't like that. They don't like that. I want my chance to be
saved. So they take limited atonement completely out of their message,
completely out of their teaching. And they say, Christ died for
every son of Adam to give everybody a chance to be saved. If you'll
just accept him, you'll be saved. If you'll just accept him, his
sacrifice will put away your sin. They subtract from the word
of God. And when they do that, what they're
trying to do is make God what they want him to be. Not as God
declares himself to be in this book. They just subtract what
they don't like. God's word plainly says, that
all men are dead in trespasses and sins. We got a spiritually
dead nature from our father Adam. When we were born, we were born
with Adam's dead nature so that we cannot come to Christ. And we will not come to Christ
that we might be saved. We both lack the desire to come
to Christ and we lack the ability to come to Christ because we're
dead. If we would be saved, God the father, must choose to save
us. God the Son must die to put away
our sin and the Holy Spirit must give us life and faith in Christ.
And it's the Spirit that must draw us to Christ. He must irresistibly
draw us to Christ or we will never come. And the gospel of God's grace
says that's what God's gonna do for his people. He's gonna
draw them to Christ, my sheep hear my voice. and they follow
me. Because the Spirit gives them
ears to hear, gives them faith to come to Christ and follow
Christ. But these religious liberals, they don't like that. That takes
away my chance to be saved. They think what that is saying
is, well, I could want to be saved, but can't because God
didn't choose me. I want to come to Christ, but
God won't let me because God didn't elect me. No, sir. No,
sir. Don't you ever use this truth
of God's electing love, Christ's limited atonement, that he died
for his people, that we're dependent on the Holy Spirit to give us
life, don't you ever use that truth as an excuse not to come
to Christ. No sinner who ever comes to Christ
will be turned away, ever. You come to Christ because you're
a sinner that needs a savior. You come to Christ because you're
in trouble. You need him. You know what you'll find out
soon enough? You came because he's drawing you along. I've
loved you with an everlasting love. Therefore, with loving
kindness, have I drawn you. There's no sinner yet who's ever
come to Christ for salvation and mercy and forgiveness that
didn't receive it. But see, they think this truth is saying, well,
I can't come to Christ if I want to. Well, you're not want to.
You're not want to. Unless the Holy Spirit gives
you a new want to and the new birth, really. See, they want
their chance to be saved. So what they do is they take
total depravity out of their doctrine. They take total depravity
out of their message. They take the work of the Holy
Spirit, the necessity of the new birth, they take that out
of their preaching and their teaching. If all it takes for
me is to use psychology to get you to come down here and make
a confession and then Christ's sacrifice will be accepted, you
know, applied to you, what do we need the Holy Spirit for?
They take the Holy Spirit. You don't need to be born again
if you're not dead. If you have the ability to choose Christ
on your own, to choose salvation on God's terms on your own, then
you ain't dead. We don't need the Holy Spirit
to cause us to be born again. They subtract that out of the
word altogether, and by doing so, they ruin their message.
They ruin their message. Any message that does not declare
man's total depravity and total dependence on Christ to save
and to give life is not the gospel. It's not the truth. You see how
they think they know better than God? They want salvation to be
what they want it to be. They want God to be like what
they think He is, not the way God declares Himself to be in
His word, so they just subtract the parts they don't like. Now,
our Lord warns us, you guard against this error of the Sadducees.
Just a little bit of that. Just a little bit of it will
puff you up. and make you lose your souls.
Just as easily as a little leaven will leaven the whole lump of
dough and make it rise up, make it be puffed up. You probably would not fall.
I hope you wouldn't. I hope you've been well taught
enough that you would not fall for a straight message of salvation
by your works. I don't think anybody here would
fall for that, would you? I don't think so. But you know what the
danger is? Oh, God saved us by His grace.
But now He's keeping us by our works. Oh, God's blessing me
because of my works. He's not blessing this other
fellow over here because he doesn't have the kind of faith that I
do. That's the heir of the Sadducees.
It's taking total property out of the equation. And you know
what the defense for that is? There's only one defense for
it. It's what we're doing right now. being taught the word of
God. Line upon line, precept upon
precept. When we come up on something
in God's word that's the opposite of what we think, we need to
immediately understand I'm wrong and God's right. And let's just
stop and pray that the Lord might reveal to me what this means
and give me the faith to trust Christ and believe Christ. To
believe his word and not what I think by nature. Anytime what
I think crosses what God's word says, let's throw out what I
think and stick to this word. And that'll help us avoid the
error of the Sadducees. Then thirdly, there's the false
doctrine of Herod or the Herodians. Now the Herodians, they're a
political party. That's who they were. They were
kind of sort of religious, but their main function was politics.
They were only religious. if it suited their political
agenda. Now, the Herodians were a pragmatic group. You know,
they claimed to have some religion. It's good to claim to have some
religion, because it helps you make connections out in the community.
You know, they claimed to have some religion. But buddy, they'd
compromise it, or they'd drop it in a second if it would help
them politically, or if it would help them gain wealth in this
world, or if it would help them gain influence in the world or
give them better business connections, they'd drop any religious point
like a hot potato if it helped them politically. This is their
goal. This is what they were there
for. See, the Pharisees, they added to the Word of God. The
Sadducees subtracted from the Word of God, and the Herodians,
they didn't care about God's Word at all. They only used God's
Word, they only used religion, for worldly gain, political or
financial or social, whatever it is. Now, I'll tell you how
to guard against this error. I mean, oh, guard against it,
because just a little bit of it will puff us up and cause
us to gain the whole world and lose our soul. That's what it'll
do. And the defense against this
error, just not caring what God's Word says, just meeting together
here with a group of people for social gain or financial gain
of some sort, the defense of that is being taught God's word
and praying that God would give us the faith to believe it. One of my great fears is for
you and me to give mental assent to the word of God, to give mental
assent to the gospel, for whatever reason, maybe it makes sense.
Shawn, maybe like you and me, it's all we've ever heard, it's
all we've been ever taught, so I just keep giving mental assent
to it, because that's just, you know, what we do. I don't want
to just give mental assent to the gospel. I want to use the
Word of God. I want to use these times that
we have together to open and study God's Word and to preach
Christ. I want us to use these times to find Christ. To find Christ. I want us to
use these These times to open up God's word, this is a precious,
precious time. To be able to open up God's word
and read it and study it. I want us to find salvation in
it. I want us to see where's forgiveness for my sin found? I want us to see how is it that
a sinner like me can be made righteous? I want to be able
to read the scriptures and have God reveal Christ to me so that
I find peace for my soul. So I find peace. I don't want to play games with
it. I don't play games with this. I always get to feel like I'm
very charged up, if that's the right word, after I see a dear
believer on their deathbed and die. I sat with our brother Ed Sparks
at his deathbed seven days ago. Seven days ago. And he had such peace. He had
just complete ease with whatever it is the Lord wants to do with
me. I want that for my soul. I want
that for your soul. Where's that found? It ain't
by playing games. That's not by playing religious
games. It's by reading and studying God's word and praying that he
give us faith to believe. That's what I want for us. And
then in closing, let me give you this. Why is it so important
that we heed this warning? It's because of how forgetful
we are. Look at verse 14 again. Now the disciples had forgotten
to take bread, neither had they in the ship with them more than
one loaf. And he charged them, saying, take heed, beware of
the leaven of the Pharisees and of the leaven of Herod. And they
reasoned among themselves, saying, it's because we have no bread.
When the Lord told them this, the disciples thought that the
Lord, the Lord of glory, was worried about not having enough
bread in the boat. You know what happened earlier
this very day? The Lord fed 4,000 people with
seven loaves. And they took up, was it five
baskets full of fragments? This very day, it's not like
they slept and forgot. Brother Jim Meadows used to tell
me, when he'd say he forgot something, he'd say, well, I slept since
then, so I forgot. They didn't even sleep since
then. This very day, they saw the Lord feed that multitude,
and they think the Lord's worried about not having enough bread. That's you and me. How soon we
forget. Oh, how soon we forget. That's
why we need to be taught God's word over and over and over again. Our nature will let just one
of these errors in, just as easy as you please. Our nature will
make us forget Well, we've been taught so plainly from the word
of God, it'll go out the window just as easy as you please. That's
why the apostle Paul wrote to the church at Philippi to write
the same things to you. To me, indeed, it's not grievous,
but for you, it's safe. It's safe for your souls to be
reminded of salvation in Christ over and over and over and over
again. Brother Don Fortner, told me
several years ago, he said, one of the hardest things about being
a pastor is preaching the same gospel, saying the same thing,
saying the exact same thing in every service, but sounding fresh
when you say it. How are you going to find it
to say the same thing over and over and over again? To write
the same things to you, to me, indeed it's not credulous, but
it's safe for you and me both. Don't we need to constantly be
reminded that we're nothing And Christ is everything. Don't we
constantly need to be reminded that salvation is the work of
the Godhead alone. And God doesn't need my works
to add to it. We need to be constantly reminded to seek an attitude
of humility, of kindness, of meekness, of forgiveness, of
patience. We need to constantly be reminded,
let's seek an attitude of love that shows our love one to another. Don't just have it lip service,
but in art. We need to be constantly reminded, we haven't arrived
yet. So we need to constantly be depending
on Christ the Savior. And the Lord will just let us
constantly be reminded of that. We're gonna be better off for
it. All right, hope the Lord will bless that to you.