The title of my message this
morning is False Teachers. As I was reading, I hope you were
reading along with me, you saw that the people that our Lord
is addressing, as He said, He's thoroughly going
to glean the remnant of Israel. We know that remnant is that
remnant according to the election of grace spoken of in Isaiah.
Had the Lord not left us a very small remnant, we should have
been all like Sodom and like Gomorrah. And the people of God, those
who are supposed to be worshiping him and loving him, the time
of Jeremiah, they're about to go into captivity, when Jeremiah
and Isaiah are contemporary prophets along with Amos. And our Lord has warned them
of what's going to come and told them to walk in his statues,
but they refused to do so. In verse 10, he speaks as one
who knows the heart and minds of men, to whom shall I speak
or give warning, that they may hear, behold, their ear is uncircumcised. They cannot hearken. That's inability. They cannot hearken. Behold,
the word of the Lord is for them a reproach. They have no delight
in it. And he goes on to say that The
prophets and the priests are all false and they deal falsely. So this is nothing new. What
we see going on today in this world of religion, there's nothing
new. It's been going on for a long time. And it's ever the fact
where the truth is preached, that which is false is also there.
Our Lord says, there must needs be heresies among you that that
which is true might be manifest. Wherever the true gospel is declared,
there will be false teachers that abound. The New Testament
is full of descriptions of them over and over again. Natural
religious man cannot abide and will not acknowledge God as he
is. Now, he will acknowledge God
as he wants him to be, or as he wishes he was, or as he thinks
he might be. But generally speaking, man is
just simply looking into a mirror and describing himself when he
talks about God. The scriptures are replete with
warnings to believers to mark the false teacher, to avoid them,
to turn from them, and to leave them alone. Because men are captives
to sin and Satan and their high esteem of themselves, they wish
no word from their preachers and teachers that would disturb
their notion of tranquility. The successful false teacher
plays on man's need to believe all is well and that man is right
in his own eyes. The message of the false prophet
or the preacher or the teacher is generally the same throughout
the Word of God. They tell men that there is no
problem between men and God. There's no problem between men
and God. They teach in a manner that makes men forget that God
will judge this world in righteousness by that man, Jesus Christ, whom
he raised from the dead. The prophet Amos said, woe unto
them that are at ease in Zion, who put off that terrible day. Isaiah speaks of those who will
be consumed in the torrent of God's holy wrath, the overflowing
scourge of God's wrath. He describes them as being in
a state of satisfied ease, satisfied ease, boasting that they have
hid themselves in falsehood, boasting that they don't fear
hell and they've made a covenant with death, boasting that they
made lies their refuge. You'd think nobody would do that.
Listen to what men are saying today in the pulpits of this
nation. That's exactly what they're saying.
When they're told the truth, they say, we don't want that.
We don't want to hear that. We want to hear smooth things
and easy things that make us feel comfortable and at ease. Peter spoke of those who denied
that the Lord will soon return. And the same mocked those who
preached that the Lord will soon return. Paul wrote to Timothy
of those who have a form of godliness but deny the power thereof. And
basically, that's a rejection of God's sovereignty. Because
such believe that God cannot save men without their consent
and willful choice, the natural reasoning of man, The mind of humanity, whether
admitting or not, surmises that God, therefore, cannot put them
in hell without their consent. They really believe that. They
really believe that. The most foolish thing in the
world is to talk about God sending a man to hell for unbelief, but
telling that same man God can't save him unless the man lets
him. That's a mixed message. Let me
tell you, if God can't save you according to His good pleasure
and His good will, He can't put you in hell. Because you've got
the power in both of those scenarios. Because men believe that. The
Lord confronts them throughout Scripture. Also in Timothy, Paul
wrote of a day when it was coming where man would not endure sound
doctrine, but heaped of themselves teachers that stroked their egos
and applauded their heresies. John wrote, a false teacher should
deny that Christ has come in the flesh, which is a basic denial
of the necessity of satisfied justice. No flesh, no death,
no death, no payment for sin, no salvation. Paul wrote to the
Thessalonians that the Lord would suddenly appear in judgment when
the false gospel of peace and safety had reached its pinnacle. And that's what we have here
in our text. There is a true peace. There
is a true peace. Established and effectual. Accomplished on the cross of
the Lord Jesus Christ. It's peace established because
sin was punished. Sin was judged. Sin had the wrath
of God poured out upon it. And the payment of death for
sin was made. for the wages of sin is death.
Let me say this very clearly. Apart from that, there is no
peace between men and God. The gospel is a message of peace
and death. It's a message of peace and judgment
against sin. You want to know how God feels
about sin, all as far as you have to go is to the cross of
the Lord Jesus Christ. When he was made to be sin for
us, God poured out his wrath and he drank the cup of God's
wrath down to the dregs. Christ is the way, the way, the
truth, and the life. And no man can come to God but
by him. And by him as he is described
in the scriptures, not in the ego-saturated mind of the masses. In our text, the Lord spoke to
Jeremiah of these false prophets, these false teachers. He said
that they preached peace when there was no peace. They preached
peace. Remember, he said of his people,
they don't like my word. They don't want to hear my word.
They don't want anything to do with my word. It upsets them. It upsets their apple cart. It
turns them upside down. It confronts them with their
sin. They don't want to hear my word. These who preached peace
when there was no peace, they did so against the light of Scripture
that revealed the promise that they would soon be judged and
go into captivity. And that was a picture of the
coming judgment wherein men will stand before God in exacting
judgment wherein there will be neither grace nor mercy. But
the false teacher and preachers will say that it is not so, or
by the sheer weight of redundancy convince men that there is really
no problem with God that cannot be riveted by human effort. It's
a lie. But if you hear the lie often
enough and long enough, there will be no room left for the
truth. What false preachers rely on is that men will never get
hold of the fact that good news, the gospel, is at the same time
bad news for some. That the gospel not only saves
men, it condemns men. It damns men to eternal flames. The same gospel. That salvation
is an empty word if in deliverance there is no destruction of the
enemy. It doesn't mean anything. You can talk about salvation
all day long you want to. Unless the enemy is destroyed,
you're not going to be delivered. Whoever is holding you captive,
his hands have got to be broken for there to be salvation. The
Lord told Jeremiah that these false teachers slightly healed
the hurt of his people. They slightly healed the hurt
of his people. What does that mean? That simply
means, saying it another way, in modern vernacular, means they
made the people feel better about themselves and their sinful pursuits. It's a snow job. Many years ago,
back when David and I first came here, We just finished our 38th
year, by the way, on May the 14th. Many years ago there was
a horse farm off of 441. A guy raised draft horses, big
beautiful Palomino draft horses. And those horses, you know, they
ate a lot and they made a lot of mess out in the field. A lot
of little piles of horse manure everywhere. Come wintertime,
though, it would snow and cover up those piles. And it just appeared
to be just a pretty little lumpy field, white. But when the sun came out, it
was manure. And the snow job that preachers
are pulling over people's eyes, telling them there's no problem
at all. There's peace when there is no
peace. Someday it's going to be discovered
for what it is. It's manure. Now the gospel will point it
out and set things in the right order. The false teachers' capers
are manifold, but they are all designed to slightly heal folk,
make them feel a little better. They give a little hope when
there is no hope. They speak peace when there is
no peace. These false teachers might tell
men that God loves them, I hear that a lot. I hear it everywhere.
I see it on signs. Out on I-40, there's a couple
signs and words. Supposedly Jesus is speaking.
He says, Jesus, you know that I love you. How sweet and how
precious that is. That's a good sign. Good for
burning. That'd make a nice bonfire. I'd like to set it on fire. But
they tell men that God loves them and that He has a wonderful
plan for their life. Don't that just make you feel
better, to know that God loves you, and has a wonderful plan
for life, much better than for someone to say God may hate you,
and God may have designs to slaughter you, to draw and quarter you,
like he did with Uzzo when he touched the arch. or the 50,000
men in Beth Shemoth, when one of them looked inside the Ark
of the Covenant, he slew 50,000 men in one breath. But people
don't want to hear about God like that. They want to hear
about the other side of it. Men may say that we must preach
a kind of universal love, or we can't reach the lost. Well,
we can't reach the lost anyway, and it's not our job. Where do
we get the idea that we do? Do men think that they have something
to do with salvation after all? The great shepherds, the one
who finds the sheep, he brings them home to great rejoicing
and he leaves the ninety and nine who need no repentance behind. It is through the preaching of the
gospel that God saves his people and that has nothing to do with
the preacher. He's here and gone. He's just a mouthpiece. It is
the message, not the messenger. It is the message that finds
the lost sheep. False teachers might tell men
that they have within themselves the power to better their estate
before God. That'll make them feel pretty
good. That if they move toward God, that He'll move toward them.
You take the first step, God will take the next step. But
if they can move toward God, why can't they just keep on moving
until they get there? Because it's a lie to begin with.
Men, by nature, will never move one inch closer to God. Scott
Richardson used to say, how far has man fallen? How far did he
fall in the garden? He fell so far he can't get back.
Can't find the way. Can't find the way. But it makes
men feel better to tell them that. That if you'll do something,
God will do something. If you act, God will react. How
good does that feel? How slightly does that heal a
hurt to think that they can cause God to react to their actions?
God doesn't react. God acts. We react. Like the flower toward the sun.
I've used this illustration many times, but I use it because I
like it. People think the flower bends toward the sun because
The flower is the one that does the bending, but it's not. It's
the way God made the flower. The stem has photogenic and heliogenic
cells on the outside, outside the cambium tissue in the middle.
And those cells elongate or shorten according to the light upon them.
And if the sun is on this side of the flower, the cells on this
side of the stem begin to shorten. and draw the flower over. Looks
like it's chasing the sun. But it ain't doing nothing. It's
just reacting to light. It's the light that causes these
cells. And when the sun goes down, that flower will straight
back up again. If it goes overhead, it'll bend
this way. Who's acting? God is acting,
and the flower is reacting, and that's the way it works. God
doesn't react to anything. He's not surprised by anything.
Nothing has ever occurred to him. He's God. He's God. False teachers might tell men
that there is no trouble between them and God at all. They might parse their preaching
in such a subtle manner as to convince men that God just wants
the best for them. I hear that a lot. They speak
of God as if He were a celestial Mr. Spock who just wants them
to live long and prosper. They might tell men that God,
the one who wants the best for them, has made all the tools
available for them to be their best selves. And once they have
bolstered their self-esteem and cleaned up their self-image and
have formed a positive outlook on life, dadgummit, they'll feel
better. They'll be slightly healed from
the hurt. What then is the hurt? What then is the hurt? that these
efforts slightly heal. To tell a man that God loves
him. To tell a man that by his will he can change his estate.
To tell a man that he has the tools to better himself and therefore
become acceptable to God. What's the hurt that is healed
with that kind of language? What can the false narrative
of God's love and man's will and self-improvement slightly
heal? That which is slightly healed is the innate knowledge
that men will die and then they will face God. I don't believe
men fear death. I believe they fear what follows.
I've sat at enough bedsides to know that and held the hands
of dying men and women to know that. Some who believed God,
some didn't. And I found in a lot of cases,
neither one but a whole lot different in death. You know, I like to
think when I die, I'm going to die with a stalled look on my
face claiming the righteousness of Jesus Christ. But I might
be a crybaby. And I might just show you how
much of a legalist I am in my heart because I ain't got rid
of it all yet. And say, well, you know, I wish I'd have done
better. And I wish I'd have done better. Like that was going to make some
difference. But that's the way people talk. Why? Because they
know. They know in their heart, men see men dying. They hear
the wails of men dying. They know that men are dying.
They see sin in this world, and they're troubled. They see it
in themselves. They may hide it for a long time.
They may even get under this religious false umbrella that
tells them everything's okay. That everything's okay. But when they die, they know
they faced an accounting of their lives. You know it, don't you? I knew it before I knew Christ.
I didn't want to die and face God. That's the hurtful to the tender
psyche of fearful man because it tells them that God is not
like what they would want Him to be. So the band-aid of the
better me is placed on the cancer of my utter depravity, and it
makes the boo-boo of my self-righteousness and my purification slightly
feel better. But the false prophet is false,
and he'll never be true. His message is false. His results are false. He's lying to men. The Lord said
that. They deal falsely. The priests,
even down to the prophets, they deal falsely. They deal falsely. For the most part, they do it,
I believe, for filthy lucre's sake or for the promotion of
themselves. I'll never forget Jim Baker and Tammy Faye. Remember Tammy Faye? Down at Charlotte, right outside
of Charlotte, they had a kingdom supposed to have been a spiritual
kingdom down there. The PTL, which I thought meant
pass the loot, but they said, praise the Lord. I remember one
time he was sitting, he was wearing a fine suit. He just got out
of a fine Cadillac car or Mercedes or something like that, walked
inside, and he said, our ministry is to the poor. Come now. Come now. It's like that clown
out in California makes all those movies that never make any money,
but he gets a lot of headlines. Michael Moorer. Guy has six homes,
and he talks about how poor people have it so bad, and the government
needs to help them. I say sell five of them, bud.
You can support 15 or 20 families for the next 10 years on what
you sell those five for. What does a man need six homes
for? That's the same thing. Same thing. That fellow on TV,
the one with the wavy hair that's got the big smile on his face.
I can't think of his name. Joel Obsidian. No, that's not it. Lives in a six million dollar
home. And all he does is tell people
how to do things that will make themselves profitable and happy
and rich. I know who's getting rich in that scenario. Don't
you? O. J. L. Rice had one of his
most famous sermons. I didn't agree with hardly anything
he said, but this one, the title was great. The sermon wasn't
that great, but the title was really good. Sunday. Remember that? That's
right, folks. Mark it down. Don't be fooling around with
religious play-purties here. There's payday someday. Judgment
day's on its way. You look at the book of Revelation.
John's visions were of Christ. It's not setting a date to come. But on the way, behold, he cometh. Nearer than he was yesterday.
And when he finishes this thing up, men are going to stand before
God in judgment, if they've not already been judged in Jesus
Christ. The harvest approaches. Judgment day comes and the lake
of fire awaits the devil and hell and all that know not God.
The harvest approaches and the terrors will be bound up and
cast into the fire, saith the Scripture. Hell has enlarged
itself. The rocks and caves will not
be a hiding place. Someday soon the payment for
sin will come due. It will come due. God is holy. And if you are evil, He will
not look upon you with favor. He will not see you as pure in
His eyes. He will in no wise clear the
guilty. So if your guilt hasn't been
removed, you can't stand before God. You can be judged for your
sin. Take this to heart. Take this
to heart. The only way, the only way that
a man can be accepted in the sight of God is that that man's
sins have been punished, have been judged, and the wrath of
God poured out upon them, in themselves or in the substitute
for sinners, the Lord Jesus Christ. If God
has laid your sin on Him, and thereby judged your sin on
Him. He will never hold you accountable
for sin. Never. Justice cannot twice demand payment
by bleeding sure at His hand and then again at mine. He had made Him to be sin for
us who knew no sin, that we might be made the very righteousness
of God in Him. That took place 2,000 years ago.
Listen to me. Slightly healed hurt won't cut
it. It won't cut it. Feeling better
about yourself won't cut it. Death alone is the payment for
sin. And thank God Christ died in the room instead of his people,
his elect. thereby satisfying justice in
the laws to man for them and they will never be punished. You might say, well who are the
elect? They are those whom God chose before the foundation of
the world to save. And Christ saved them on Calvary's
tree. Am I one of the elect? You might
ask. Well let me ask you this. Are
you interested in a salvation wrought entirely by God without
your participation? I'd say you're a good candidate. Do you hunger and thirst to be
saved God's way? Then camp at mercy's door. No
sinner truly seeking mercy has ever been turned away from God.
You won't find that anywhere in Scripture. Or would you rather
just be made to feel better about yourself? Would you like to be
slightly healed or given a placebo, a sugar pill, a word of encouragement
to do better and be better? If so, there are plenty of puppeteers
with a shelf stoked full of Band-Aids who will appease you in your
depravity and tell you that God is not like He says he is. But it's rather a kind of team
member in your cooperative pursuit of salvation. How long halt ye
between two opinions? God be God, serve him. And if Baal be Baal, if Baal
be God, you serve him. When Joshua crossed the river
and looked back across to the other side, He said, I don't know what gods
you're going to serve. And the true God was not given in that
scenario as one they might. He said, you can serve the gods
on the other side of the river, Baal, Peel, or Ashtoreth, and
the others. But as for me and my house, we're
going to serve the Lord. We're going to serve the one
true God. The one true God. Christ said, In His high priestly
prayer, Father, the hour has come. Glorify Thy Son, that Thy
Son may also glorify Thee. As Thou hast given Him power
over all flesh, that He should give eternal life to as many
as Thou hast given Him. And this is eternal life. This
is it. I love it when the Bible says
this is it and then tells you what it is. This is it, folks.
This is eternal life. That you might know God. Even Jesus Christ. whom He has
sent. This is it. And I'm not talking about the
God who wants what's best for you, or the God who wants to
do something for you He can't. Or the God who wants to make
you feel good about yourself. I'm talking about the God who
judges sin and will punish it with divine wrath and either
has done so in Jesus Christ for your sake, or He will judge it
in you. Mark it down. Priests and prophets
deal falsely, saying peace, peace, when there is no peace. You have peace that is apart
from the peace established on the cross you count. is a false peace. Abandon it
forthwith. Father bless this strong understanding
we pray in Christ's name. Amen. Amen.