Full Transcript

Welcome to Share the Word. Today we’ll be talking about manipulation, greed, deceit, spreading lies and falsehoods, being judgmental. Sounds like the plot of a movie, doesn’t it? Well, I suppose it is. But it’s so much more, and I’m not going to spoil the plot. Second Corinthians chapter 11.

Wolves. Grimm’s Fairy Tales is a collection of about 200 stories from German folklore that the brothers Grimm collected and preserved in print more than 200 years ago. Most of them are tales with a moral passed down from generation to generation. Maybe the best known of them was called Little Red Riding Hood. It’s about a little girl whose mother sends her to carry a basket of goodies to grandmother’s house. But to get there, she has to pass through some dark woods.

Along the path through the woods, she encounters a wolf. He inquires to where she is going all by herself and learns that he’s headed to grandmother’s house to share with her some goodies that mother has made. The wolf suggests she stop and pick some flowers along the path to take to grandmother as well, and as she thinks that’s a good idea, she sets about doing so. While she is picking flowers, the wolf heads to grandmother’s cottage himself. When he arrives, he knocks on the door and grandmother calls, Who is it? And the big bad wolf does his best Riding Hood impression, It’s me, grandmother.

And the old lady tells him to lift up the latch and come in. Once inside, though, the ferocious wolf devours the old woman. Then he puts on one of grandmother’s nightgowns and pulls on her nightcap over his ears. He climbs into her bed and pulls the covers up to his chin and waits for the little girl to arrive. This is a wonderful story to frighten your small children with before bedtime. And I’m not going to divulge the dramatic ending if you’re not familiar.

But for those of you who don’t know it, you think Red Riding Hood recognizes it’s really the wolf in Granny’s bedclothes and escapes? Or does she get devoured as well? Hmm. Believe it or not, that’s a lot like the situation unfolding in Corinth that prompted Paul’s second letter that we’re studying. As we’ve seen, impostors followed him to that city intent on teaching doctrines contrary to what he had taught and gaining control of the congregation in order to financially take advantage of them. And Paul has learned they’ve been welcomed into the congregation.

They’re getting a hearing. They’re gaining a following. This letter is Paul’s attempt to draw the Corinthian church back to Christ and to the gospel of grace and to the rightful relationship he had had with them as their church’s founder and spiritual father. You can hear his grave concern at the outset of chapter 11. Listen. Bear with me, for I feel a divine jealousy for you since I betrothed you to one husband, to present you as a pure virgin to Christ.

But I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ. For if someone comes and proclaims another Jesus than the one we proclaimed, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you have received, or if you accept a different gospel than the one you have accepted, you put up with that too readily. His analogy is to a doting Jewish father who has betrothed his beloved daughter to a deserving man. In the Jewish culture, the young woman and her husband-to-be would not consummate their marriage until after the marriage ceremony, which could be up to a year after their betrothal. But during that betrothal period, they were promised to each other and were to be faithful. In the analogy, Paul is the proud father.

He had introduced the Corinthians to Jesus, and they were betrothed to him, you could say, when they accepted the gospel message Paul had preached among them. But he is telling them he is afraid they are being spiritually deceived now, just as Eve had been deceived by the serpent in the Garden of Eden, and that they are being led away from faithfulness to Christ by these seductive false teachers who have invaded their church. I used the term wolves in my lesson title. Why? Because Jesus had warned his disciples that what was happening in Corinth would in fact happen. In his famous Sermon on the Mount in chapter 7 of Matthew, he said, Watch out for false prophets.

They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves, like the wolf in Grandma’s nightclothes trying to fool Red Riding Hood. Paul himself would warn some of the early church leaders in and around Ephesus in the very same terms. We read this in Acts chapter 20. He said there, I know this, that after I leave you, savage wolves will come in among you, and they will not spare the flock. And from your own number men will arise and distort the truth in order to draw away disciples after themselves. That’s a pretty graphic image Jesus and Paul are using, don’t you think?

Have you ever seen a wild animal like a wolf destroy its prey? That’s how they described it, how they regarded false teachers who took it upon themselves to spiritually confuse and then take advantage of young Christians, or vulnerable spiritual seekers, wolves. And that’s how we should regard them too. As we’ve already learned from this letter, these false teachers who arrived in Corinth after Paul had left the city came specifically on purpose to try and subvert what he had accomplished there, to undercut him and his teaching, to see if they could draw people to themselves ultimately for personal gain. They claimed to have letters of commendation from Jerusalem, probably forgeries, and they disparaged Paul as someone who was not with Jesus from the beginning, whose message of salvation was deficient, and who could write a strong letter but who was weak and unimpressive in person.

Plus, they cast doubts on his honesty and on his character. Of course, they did all this while Paul was not there, like keyboard warriors, as we call them, who are very bold in attacking someone from their laptop at a safe distance, but who would never say the same things face to face with those they attack. Yet these wolves were a serious problem in Corinth, and Paul knew it. And in chapter 11, he is directly zeroing in on that. What he had built there, the people he had led to Christ there, taught, ministered to, prayed for, cared for, were too important to let the false teachers now ravage them. The Corinthian believers were his spiritual children, and he knew it was his job to protect them as they matured.

Paul may not have been a physically imposing figure in person, or even an eloquent speaker, but he was very sure of his calling as an apostle of Jesus Christ. He understood God’s truth very clearly and knew he had authority given to him by Jesus as an apostle to wield it if necessary. We’ve elsewhere seen him boldly do that when something important was on the line. Remember when he called out even the apostle Peter when Peter’s actions were misleading young Christians in Antioch. Hey, if he would call out an errant apostle, how much more so these frauds? What we should take away from this section, I believe, the big idea here, is first of all that Satan has been deceiving people from the beginning to turn them away from the truth, since Eve in the Garden of Eden, as Paul says.

And he was doing it in Paul’s day, and he’s still doing it quite effectively today. Authentic Christian leaders, faithful church leaders, should generally be meek and gentle, as Tony was saying last time. But when dealing with wolves, that’s a far different story. When there are those who are seriously and intentionally misleading people spiritually, leaders must be bold enough to confront that, to expose errors, to clarify biblical truth in order to protect God’s flock. That’s why they’re called shepherds in the New Testament, the word we get our title pastor from. Pastors are instructed, Guard the flock of God over which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers.

Paul clearly did not view the situation in Corinth as some kind of popularity contest between him and the false teachers, which he was in danger of losing. No, it was much more than that. He saw them as destructive wolves who had snuck in among God’s flock with wrong motives, destructive doctrines, and it was his role to protect them. The teaching of these men, although we’re not told exactly its contents, was dangerously contrary to the teaching of Christ and Paul. At verses 12 and 13 in this chapter, he puts it very clearly: I will keep on doing what I am doing in order to cut the ground from under those who want this opportunity to be considered equal with us. For such people are false apostles, deceitful workers, masquerading as apostles of Christ.

In Paul’s view, not much, if anything, is as serious as assuming a role as a spiritual leader with the goal of misleading and taking advantage of people. He was alarmed and disappointed to learn from Titus that these impostors had naively been welcomed into the Corinthian church because, as he put it in verse 4, they were proclaiming another Jesus than the one he had proclaimed. The Corinthians were receiving a different spirit than the Holy Spirit that they had received when they believed into Jesus, and they were now even accepting a different gospel from the one they had heard from Paul and his team. That is the gospel of salvation on the basis of grace through faith in Jesus Christ. As I was thinking about exactly what Paul said in that verse, verse 4, those three charges, I realized not a lot has changed over the last 2,000 years.

If anything, the enemy has just gotten better at his deceptions with centuries to practice them. Are there those like the false teachers at Corinth who boldly today proclaim another Jesus than the one Paul preached about? The answer is absolutely yes. Groups like the Mormons, the Jehovah’s Witnesses, the New Age religions proclaim a Jesus who is less than God. A Jesus who is a created being. When they deny the deity of Jesus Christ, they are doing exactly what Paul charges the first-century wolves with.

That is, proclaiming a fundamentally different Jesus. Biblical Christianity insists Jesus was the unique Son of God, the second person of the divine Trinity, who came out of heaven, becoming a man on a mission to save us. Anything other than that is a different Jesus. Are there false teachers who call themselves Christians today proclaiming a different gospel than Paul preached? The answer is absolutely yes. The groups I mentioned a moment ago all have contrived their own merit-based salvation plan.

The requirements vary from one group to the next, but being acceptable to God is always based on human merit, earning it through their religion’s rules. Even large denominations like the Roman Catholic Church have twisted the message of salvation into a series of requirements their members must achieve. They call them sacraments in order to hope to be saved. Their adherents are taught that they must earn God’s favor by faithfulness to the seven sacraments. Liberal Protestant groups, largely in apostasy today, have decided hell is not real anyway, so just do your best to be a good person and all will be well. What a different and lying message that is.

The enemy of our souls has so many false teachers today distorting the gospel message Jesus commanded his followers to go into all the world and preach. Remember what Paul wrote in Galatians, where false teachers had also invaded that church? I am astonished, he said, that you are quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel. Not that there is another one. But there are some who trouble you, who want to distort the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we have already preached, let him be accursed.

Those who teach anything other than the message of salvation offered to us by God on the basis of His grace and through personal faith in Jesus, let them be accursed, Paul says. Does that sound harsh? But what could possibly be worse than misleading people on this most critical of all questions, What must I do to really be saved? As Jesus said about the false religious leaders in Israel in His day, Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees! You shut the door of the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to.

On the third point, are there those today twisting the role of the Holy Spirit and using false teaching about the Holy Spirit for their own selfish ends? My word, that is everywhere today. I watch clips of services in churches that identify with the Word of Faith movement, people doing all sorts of crazy, frenzied things, attributing them to an outpouring of God’s Holy Spirit. As I watch them falling out or writhing around on the floor or babbling ecstatic nonsense all at once as raucous music blares, I wonder, have they never read that the Holy Spirit is never the author of confusion, or that when Christians gather, everything must be done decently, in an orderly way? Don’t mistake emotional euphoria or intentionally worked-up hysteria for a genuine move of the Holy Spirit of God. This stuff is from a different spirit.

You know, boldness for truth is a rare commodity. Most Bible-believing pastors and Christian leaders are reticent to call out false teaching. Even those who are obviously using Jesus’ name and wild claims about the Holy Spirit to create a following for themselves get a pass. They manipulate people to enrich themselves, but are rarely called out. Calling out spiritual deceivers, hey, that’s an unpleasant task, and occasionally, though, there is an exception. I watched a short video the other day that someone sent me of a local Calvary Chapel pastor in Florida calling out a prosperity gospel evangelist named Dana Muldoon to her face, right in one of her meetings.

Kid come to his town and set up a tent near where his church met. He learned that some members of his church had been going to her meetings out of curiosity and were being taught distortions of biblical ideas, especially about the Holy Spirit, and fed the typical lies of the false prosperity gospel. If you’re unfamiliar with that term, the prosperity gospel turns faith into a kind of magical power that causes God to pour out wealth and physical health on a person’s life. This faithful pastor went to the front during the tent service of Mrs. Muldoon, and she assumed he had a testimony to share, but he took the mic and then boldly called her out for preaching this distortion of the gospel. She and those in attendance were shocked, but I’m pretty sure the Apostle Paul would have done the same thing in the same situation.

There are so many around today preaching a different gospel, a different Jesus, and a different Holy Spirit. They use biblical terminology, and there is often powerful emotions and possibly even demonic demonstrations in their meetings. But if you listen to the content of what they are preaching, it is very different than what Jesus and the writers of the New Testament emphasize. They strut around the stage in their shiny suits, wearing their Rolex watches, and I imagine they’re not a lot different than those Paul called the super apostles and how they acted in Corinth. The true character of these people usually comes to light in time, but in the meantime, they are preying on naive believers for personal gain. And much worse, infinitely worse, they are confusing people about what the real gospel of Christ is.

The story of one who suffered and died for our sins and calls on us to take up our crosses and follow Him. And you know another part that angers me? These performers masquerading as ministers of Christ give the opponents of Christianity plenty of good reason to mock our faith, and they are incapable of distinguishing between true and false ministers of Christ. So we’re all smeared with the same broad brush of being fakes and fools. Listen to what Paul, when pushed to it, appeals to for his legitimacy as a true apostle of Christ. This is beginning in verse 21.

Whatever they dare to boast about, referring to the false teachers, I could boast more. Are they servants of Christ? I know I sound like a madman, but I have served Him far more. I’ve worked harder, been put in prison more often, been whipped times without number, faced death again and again. Five different times the Jewish leaders gave me 39 lashes. Imagine that.

Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked, once spending a whole night in the depths of the sea. I have traveled on many long journeys, thousands of miles actually Paul traveled. I have faced dangers from rivers, from robbers. I faced dangers in the cities, in the deserts, on the ocean.

I have faced danger from men who claim to be believers but who are not. I have been hungry and thirsty and have gone without food. I’ve shivered in the cold without enough clothes to keep warm. Then, besides all of this, I carry daily the burden of concern for all the churches. All the new churches he had planted on his missionary journeys, he meant. So he asks, Who is weak without my feeling that weakness?

and Who is led astray and I do not burn with anger about it? If I must boast, I would rather boast about the things that show how weak I am. In this chapter, Paul reluctantly compares his ministry with the smooth-talking, boastful, self-appointed super apostles, as he calls them, who have trailed him to Corinth. He felt driven to do that, although he felt foolish having to. But in contrast to them, Paul’s life was anything but a life of proud self-promotion, of material prosperity, of taking advantage of other people. It was a life of hardship, of suffering, a life of service, a life invested in others for Christ’s sake.

I have a friend who, when he prays with me, always ends his prayers with, Lord, make me a blessing to someone today at my expense. At my expense. That could have been Paul’s prayer because he was not looking to get things from people. He was expending himself for people. Like those in Corinth, he brought the only true gospel to, expending himself over and over and over. He wasn’t ashamed to admit he was weak, to be called less than eloquent, to be described as unimpressive in person.

If these things were so, he thought, how much more that proved that it was the Holy Spirit of God who was powerfully at work through him, because it couldn’t be him. And my God, look at all his life accomplished. I’m trying to relate the very real problems which emerged for leaders of the Christian movement in the first century to the problems caused by wolves in sheep’s clothing to our day. In verse 29, Paul wrote, Who is made to fall and I am not indignant. Another translation puts it, Who is led astray, and I do not burn with anger over it? Paul singularly saw the danger, the spiritual danger these young Christians were in because of the wolves, the spiritual impostors, and it made him angry.

If these ones he cared for fell for their lies and were led astray from Christ, oh, he would anguish over them like the death of his own child. What we’re hearing in this chapter is the heart of a real pastor. As someone who has been both a church planter and a pastor, I understand what the Apostle Paul was feeling when he wrote these things. Seeing people God has entrusted to your care led astray causes profound emotional pain to a true pastor. A true minister of Christ will not let that go on if he can help it. Unfortunately, friends, if we see the template in this chapter, a different Jesus, another gospel, a different spirit, spiritual counterfeits undeniably are preying on God’s flock today, just as really as when Paul penned this letter.

Do you think you are spiritually wise enough to recognize them? The surest way to know who are false teachers, who are the wolves in sheep clothing that Jesus warned us about, is to become very familiar with the truths in God’s Word, so familiar with the true, the authentic, that when it’s twisted, you’ll recognize it. You’ll know. We trust our podcast is helping you get to that place. It’s one of our goals. Thanks for listening.

This is Paul for Share the Word. Thanks, Paul. So this is going to sound strange, but the first thing that came to my mind was how the Secret Service trained their agents to identify counterfeit money. I know, but just go with me for a second. They’re not trained by learning all about counterfeit methods that are used. They’re trained so intensely on recognizing the genuine article that the slightest deviation and falsehood stands out.

As followers of Christ, we should recognize false gospels, and we should recognize false teachers, and we should be calling them out as well. At Share the Word, we hold strongly to the principles of scriptural truth. We don’t look to persecute religious orders, but rather shine the light of truth on false beliefs practiced and taught. There’s only one gospel and one Jesus Christ, who is the way, the truth, and the life. From all of us at Share the Word, our blessings and prayers go out to all of you.