Full Transcript

Welcome to Share the Word. Today’s podcast reminds me of an old commercial some of you may remember. Their slogan was, Is it real or is it Memorex? Well, we’ve come a long way since that commercial, but we continue down a path that today’s podcast will explore in depth. Here we go. First Thessalonians chapter 2, recognizing authentic ministers of Christ.

There’s a sucker born every minute. Ever heard that aphorism? No one in history wants to take credit for it, I checked. But a lot of people have made a lot of money operating on that premise, the premise being that people can be pretty easily fooled and parted with their money. I read a statistic the other day that 87% of Americans have bought counterfeit products, whether they realize it or not. And I have no idea how they arrived at that number, by the way.

But there is indisputably a huge market for counterfeits in the U.S., knockoffs as they’re called here. Guess what the number one most counterfeited product is? Have you locked in your answer? It’s shoes, especially men’s sports shoes, like tennis shoes. The reason for this is an awful lot of young men want to wear whatever the most recent Nike basketball sneaker is, but they don’t necessarily have 150 bucks to buy a pair. Now, if a reseller on Amazon says he has the same shoes for 40 bucks, well, what a bargain!

And he’s texting his friend, Hey bros, just got a stupid good buy on some Jordans, one in, or whatever kids say nowadays. Another heavily counterfeited product is women’s handbags, because a lot of women see them as a status symbol. So fake Louis Vuitton bags or Gucci bags, Prada bags, sell like hotcakes. Whether from online venues or out of the back of a guy’s van in the city. According to the U.S. Trade Commission, 75% of the fake products bought and sold in the U.S. originate in China.

You got it. Counterfeiting luxury goods is a big part of their economy, so authorities in that country show very little interest in controlling it. Counterfeiters are good at what they do, and their products are not easily told from the real thing by everyday people. The middleman companies like Facebook Marketplace or Amazon or eBay, they have a hard time policing this. It’s so huge, even when they want to. Their view, ultimately, is that they are just a forum to bring together buyers and sellers.

It’s up to the buyer to beware. I read the number 500 billion, billion with a B, worldwide as an estimate of the money lost by legitimate companies to counterfeiters annually. It’s a big problem that’s hard to tackle because, well, there’s a sucker born every minute. There are always people hoping to find something too good to be true or susceptible to being fooled. Full disclosure, I admit I’m one of them. You know what, though?

The damage being done in the financial sector, as bad as that is, doesn’t even compare, in my opinion, to the damage being done in the spiritual sector by spiritual deceivers, fake healers, false prophets, false teachers. These people, and there’s lots of them, traffic in a counterfeit gospel, counterfeit miracles, counterfeit prophecies, false doctrine. It’s nothing new. They’ve always been around since the early decades of Christianity. In 2 Corinthians chapter 11, verses 13 and 14, the apostle Paul warned against such people in these words. Such men are false apostles, deceitful workers, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ.

No wonder, for even Satan himself disguises himself as an angel of light. Therefore, Paul said, it’s not surprising if his servants also disguise themselves as servants of righteousness. But their end will be according to their deeds. Why does this matter? Because just like fake shoe and handbag producers hurt both the consumer as well as the legitimate businesses they’re ripping off, spiritual deceivers not only bilk lots of money out of their naive consumers, much worse, they do tremendous damage to the real cause of Christ, making many people doubt if there even is such a thing as authentic Christianity. Most of Paul’s letters in the New Testament were written within months or at most a couple years from the time he visited these cities and established churches there.

Isn’t it amazing how quickly the false apostles and spiritual grifters showed up? It’s like when Nike comes out with a new sneaker style and a month or two later the marketplace is already full of a bunch of cheap knockoffs. Paul doesn’t call anybody out by name in 1 Thessalonians chapter 2. He may have known the names of the men posing in that city as apostles. But he does actually call out spiritual deceivers by name several other places in his writings in the New Testament. By name?

Yes, by name. Philetus, Hermogenes, Hymenaeus, and a few others made the apostle Paul’s hall of shame. Here in this letter to a very successful young church in northern Greece, he unfortunately finds it necessary to spend a lot of ink defending his and his team’s ministry when they were in that city. Reading between the lines is not hard to understand why. He felt the need to do this because he wanted to draw a clear contrast between authentic ministers of Christ, like he and his team, and the counterfeits that were already invading these places, looking to take advantage of people. And because he did, we have here in chapter 2 of 1 Thessalonians some ways we can differentiate between authentic ministers of Christ and the counterfeits, because Paul shares several characteristics of him and his team to clarify this issue.

So let’s consider them. I’m going to be quoting from the very literal New American Standard translation today. Listen to verses 1 through 8. For you yourselves know, brethren, that our coming to you was not in vain. But after we had already suffered and been mistreated in Philippi, we had the boldness in our God to speak to you the gospel of God amid much opposition. For our exhortation does not come from error or impurity or by way of deceit.

Just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel, so we speak, not as pleasing men, but God who examines our hearts. We didn’t come to you with flattering speech, as you know, nor with a pretext for greed. God is our witness. Nor did we seek glory from men, either from you or from others, even though as apostles of Christ, we could have asserted our authority. But we proved to be gentle among you, as a nursing mother tenderly cares for her children. Having so fond an affection for you, we were well pleased to impart to you not only the gospel of God, but also our own lives, because you had become so dear to us.

Interesting. There are several characteristics of authentic ministers we can unpack from those lines, can’t we? So, by contrast, several of the counterfeits characteristics can be determined from these lines as well. We learned in our journey through the book of Acts about Paul and his team’s difficulties in place after place they shared the gospel. He reminds the Thessalonians here of what happened to them in Philippi, Macedonia. We saw about it in Acts chapter 16.

They were publicly beaten there with rods and shackled in prison, remember? After we had already suffered and been mistreated in Philippi, Paul writes here, as you know, we nevertheless had the boldness in God to come and speak the gospel to you. What happened to them in Philippi would certainly have discouraged anyone who was in the ministry, as we call it, for self-serving reasons, don’t you think? Yet Paul reminds the Thessalonians, once freed from jail in Philippi, the team moved on to their city and boldly shared the exact same gospel message there. Once again in Thessalonica, after some weeks of initial success, influential Jews raised up opposition to them and instigated a riot. Paul narrowly escaped that mob under the cover of night.

It was like this pretty much everywhere they went. What does that tell us? It tells me that authentic ministers of Christ persist even through opposition. Paul and his teams persisted at sharing the good news because they were doing what they were doing in obedience to Christ. Would they have been willing to suffer time and again in place after place for false motives if they were not sincere? So, first, authentic ministers of Christ persist even through opposition.

A second characteristic of authentic ministers of Christ we can glean from verses 3 and 4, where he wrote, For our exhortation doesn’t come from error or impurity or by way of deceit, but just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel, so we speak, not as pleasing men, but as God who examines our hearts. Authentic ministers of Christ don’t tell people what they want to hear, but honestly convey the truths in God’s Word they need to hear. Paul adds on this point later in the chapter, We constantly thank God that when you received the Word of God which you heard from us, you accepted it, not as the word of men, but for what it really is, the Word of God, which also performs its work in you who believe it.

So many of the counterfeits who appeared in the first century churches, and certainly the ones we can watch on TV or online today, are all about sharing a message that pleases people, that scratches their itchy ears, as Paul puts it elsewhere. Lots of psychobabble, telling their listeners constantly how God wants them to be prosperous and well, never sharing Jesus’ challenge to take up our crosses and follow Him, never warning people of judgment that is coming, or telling them any other hard truths. I listened to Larry King, the famous interviewer, years ago try and get Joel Osteen to just say yes or no as to whether hell is a real destination for those who reject Jesus. It was like trying to nail Jell-O to the wall. He just would not say whether he believed that. You know, I knew from that one interview he was not an authentic minister of Jesus Christ.

Authentic ministers of Christ do not only tell people what they want to hear, but honestly convey the truths in God’s Word they need to hear. A third, at verse 6 Paul writes, We never came with flattering speech, as you know, nor with a pretext for greed, God is our witness. At verse 9 he adds, For you recall, brethren, our labor and hardship, how working night and day so as not to be a burden to you, we proclaimed to you the gospel of God. A third point about authentic ministers of Christ is they can never legitimately be accused of using the ministry as a guise for getting rich. This doesn’t contradict what we’ve already seen in Galatians and elsewhere about paying people who work hard at leading a church or teaching and preaching God’s Word.

If a minister is effective at these things, that’s a real vocation, and their time should be fairly remunerated by those who benefit from their work. But Paul is pointing out here that when his team was ministering in a new place like Thessalonica, no one could accuse them of being there to raise money or using their time there in some kind of scheme to enrich themselves. Paul’s pattern was, in fact, as he alludes to here, while making initial contacts and planting churches in new places, he never asked for money. That was his policy. Not that his time wasn’t valuable; it’s that he wanted no one to question his motives, so he worked at his trade to pay for their expenses. Remember, he was a leather worker, a tent maker.

So as he and Silas and Timothy shared the gospel and planted that church in Thessalonica and elsewhere, he worked at his trade, worked with his hands to pay his own expenses. After ministries were well established, though, Paul did accept ministry support from believers now who understood the principle of stewardship and wanted to fund their work in sharing the gospel elsewhere. But there was never any cushy lifestyle for these missionaries, no Rolex watches, private jets, or $800 suits, or the first century’s counterparts of those things, whatever they were. So why do we see these things flaunted by so-called prosperity gospel preachers today, televangelists who shamelessly preach a different gospel while they enrich themselves at the expense of naive and desperate people?

By the way, on this point, someone just recently produced a four-hour documentary, an exposé really, on one such scam artist named Benny Hinn, who’s been posing as a prophet and a healer for the last 30 years. Man, this was long overdue. This documentary by a man named Mike Winger lays out tons of damning evidence. People like Benny Hinn do so much damage to the cause of Christ. The man lives in a 7,000 square foot, $10 million home in California, part of the time because he has another similar one in Florida. His reported net worth is over $60 million, built from foolish and desperate people, he’s told, You’ll be just as blessed as me if you only send me money.

You can be healed of this or whatever is bothering you if you send me money. Sending him money is the key objective of his ministry. He and many others like him are absolutely shameless. They are frauds, conducting themselves exactly oppositely of the way authentic ministers of Christ do. When you see someone claiming to be a minister of Christ living like a Russian oligarch, something is very, very wrong. The ministers of Christ I have known and worked alongside of, even the most successful ones, have lived modestly because they channeled the lion’s share of their ministry’s resources back into reaching more people for Christ.

You know, one great example of that is Rick Warren, very successful pastor on the West Coast in my generation. Rick made it a point of living on 10% of his salary and giving 90% of it away to fund other ministry projects. After he wrote a mega best-selling book called The Purpose Driven Life, he stopped taking any salary at all from the Saddleback Church, where he served for many years. What a contrast to the counterfeits. Remember this: authentic ministers of Christ can never legitimately be accused of using the ministry as a guise for getting rich. In verses 6 to 8, Paul makes a final point about authentic ministers of Christ.

He says there, Nor did we seek glory from men, either from you or from others, even though as apostles of Christ we could have exerted our authority. We were well pleased to impart to you not only the gospel of God, but our own lives because you had become that dear to us. This has to do with Paul, Timothy, and Silas’s demeanor, how they conducted themselves while in Thessalonica. People in ministry who love the accolades too much and enjoy being honored by others too much always strike me as being inauthentic. Authentic ministers of Christ, in contrast, love to invest in people and don’t need special recognition for doing that. In the verses following, Paul compares his ministry in Thessalonica to a nurturing mother and a patient, encouraging father.

Good parents don’t feed and teach and care for their children because they’re hoping someone will nominate them for Mother or Father of the Year. They do it out of love for their kids. Paul says, Think back to when we were in your city, sharing the gospel with you. It wasn’t just a lot of words. We shared our hearts and lives with you as well. I remember when I was in my first year of college studying for ministry as a vocation.

Over Christmas break, I accompanied my home church’s youth group on a winter retreat. Our youth pastor had managed to get a hotshot youth minister from a large, well-known church to come as our special speaker. I remember Dave, that was his name, showed up with an entourage and spoke at a few services, but otherwise we never really saw him. He flew in with a few of his buddies. They did their own thing and just showed up at services so Dave could preach at us. He collected his fee after the Sunday night service, and they were on their way.

I was thoroughly unimpressed. It was the opposite of what Paul describes here as the way he and his team conducted themselves in Thessalonica. This guy was too important to mingle. His air showed he considered himself a celebrity. He just struck me as completely inauthentic, and I wasn’t surprised, honestly. I’m saddened by it, but not surprised.

His subsequent life proved my impressions were exactly spot on. Authentic ministers of Christ don’t need to be treated like big shots. They don’t see themselves as celebrities. They serve those they are ministering in humility. They invest themselves in others because they care, and because they believe sharing themselves in God’s Word with others is vitally important. Hey, I’m sorry if I’ve shocked you today by calling out some religious counterfeits in our time.

I know most people would never do that. It’s a little uncomfortable. It’s a little awkward. I don’t do it out of any sense of pride, I assure you. I only do it because that’s the example that’s set for us by the true apostles of Christ in the New Testament. I’m sure they wished they never had to do it either, you know.

But you’ll be amazed if this is the first time you’ve gone through the New Testament writings at just how much of a spotlight is put on false teachers and spiritual grifters who plagued early Christianity, even calling them out by name. The apostles used terms like, Watch out for them, avoid them, rebuke them, expose them. The reality is, if the New Testament is true, and I’m completely convinced it is, we’re in a constant spiritual warfare, a battle for truth and for people’s souls. And realize, our enemy doesn’t play by any rules. As the passage I quoted earlier reveals, he will gladly use people who disguise themselves as apostles of Christ. So it’s incumbent on us to listen carefully to what people claiming to represent Jesus say.

Are they willing to tell the truth? Do they call things what the Bible calls them? Are they willing to teach what Jesus and his apostles taught? Or are they smooth talkers who are always sharing flattering, easy-to-listen-to messages? Do they make false promises and false prophecies? Are their personal lives marked by purity and sincerity, or immorality and greed?

As much as I and anyone who honestly wants to teach the Word of God would like to never have to bring up these things, we unfortunately must because we, as Paul did, need to clarify for those we influence who listen to us what authentic and inauthentic ministers of Christ really look like. We need to distinguish for you the real from the counterfeit, as I’m trying to do today. Again, why does this matter? Because just like fake shoe and handbag producers hurt both the consumer as well as the legitimate businesses they’re ripping off, spiritual deceivers steal money from their naive consumers and, even worse, do tremendous damage to real Christianity, making people I talk to doubt if there even is such a thing as real Christianity.

For any of you who will come across this podcast to recognize the Christian scammers and counterfeits for what they are, and have by extension decided Christianity is all one big scam, I hope you’ll think it through a little deeper. There’s no such thing as counterfeit unreality. The fact there are frauds, counterfeit ministers of Christ, is only because there are real, authentic ministers of Christ, those like Paul, Silas, Timothy, and many I have known and watched carefully in my lifetime, the real deal, who preach and teach and live out the Word of God not for selfish reasons, but because they know it can change the lives and eternities of those who believe it, just as it has changed their own. This has been Paul for Share the Word. Thanks, Paul. This podcast brings to mind something I learned quite a while ago, and I think that it’s relevant here.

Did you know that the way the Secret Service teaches agents to recognize counterfeit bills is not by learning all of the different possibilities of counterfeiting, but by learning how to spot the genuine article with complete confidence? So it stands to reason that the best way to spot false prophets, false teachers, and those who would sway you away from the gospel of Christ is to know the Word of God, to know His Word with complete confidence. From all of us at Share the Word, our blessings and prayers go out to all of you.