Tag Archives: False Teachers

Day 8: The Effects of False Teaching

Lamentations 2:11-14 :

My eyes fail with tears.
My heart is troubled.
My bile is poured on the earth,
because of the destruction of the daughter of my people,
because the young children and the infants swoon in the streets of the city.

They ask their mothers,
“Where is grain and wine?”
when they swoon as the wounded in the streets of the city,
when their soul is poured out into their mothers’ bosom.

What shall I testify to you?
What shall I liken to you, daughter of Jerusalem?
What shall I compare to you,
that I may comfort you, virgin daughter of Zion?
For your breach is as big as the sea.
Who can heal you?

Your prophets have seen false and foolish visions for you.
They have not uncovered your iniquity,
to reverse your captivity,
but have seen for you false revelations and causes of banishment.

One of the critical themes in the New Testament is the warning against false teachers. Over and over, Christians are warned that enemies of the Church will rise up within the Church itself. Let’s take a little tour and look at some of these warnings.

Acts 20:28-30 :

Take heed, therefore, to yourselves, and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the assembly of the Lord and God which he purchased with his own blood. For I know that after my departure, vicious wolves will enter in among you, not sparing the flock. Men will arise from among your own selves, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them.

Romans 16:17-18 :

Now I beg you, brothers, look out for those who are causing the divisions and occasions of stumbling, contrary to the doctrine which you learned, and turn away from them. For those who are such don’t serve our Lord, Jesus Christ, but their own belly; and by their smooth and flattering speech, they deceive the hearts of the innocent.

1 Timothy 4:1-3 :

But the Spirit says expressly that in later times some will fall away from the faith, paying attention to seducing spirits and doctrines of demons, through the hypocrisy of men who speak lies, branded in their own conscience as with a hot iron, forbidding marriage and commanding to abstain from foods which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth.

2 Timothy 4:3-4 :

For the time will come when they will not listen to the sound doctrine, but having itching ears, will heap up for themselves teachers after their own lusts, and will turn away their ears from the truth, and turn away to fables.

This is actually a small sample of the things the New Testament says about false teachers. With this in mind, guarding against false teaching should be a major part of what goes on in our churches today. The Bible does teach that we be unified as believers, but it also teaches that we reject false teaching. The two must always go together. If someone preaches unity in order to permit the teaching of false doctrine, they are wrong. If someone separates believers over false doctrine, they are also wrong. In our passage today, we are asked to consider an Old Testament example of the same thing. It teaches us what happens to us when we listen to these false teachers.

What had happened in Judah was that the false prophets that had been speaking against Jeremiah, were failing to show the people their sin. As a result, the people kept sinning until God was forced to destroy them. Jeremiah laments over the fact that even children were affected. He felt the horror of the effects of false teaching. This is yet another warning to us. We need to pay attention to the truth about our sin. We must also be vigilant to remove false teaching from our churches. If we don’t, we will eventually witness God’s hand of discipline on us as His children. He will not allow evil to go on in His household even if we have been lying to ourselves about our situation.

Day 107: Thinking Critically About What Teachers Say

Jeremiah 23:25-32

“I have heard what the prophets have said, who prophesy lies in my name, saying, ‘I had a dream! I had a dream!’ How long will this be in the heart of the prophets who prophesy lies, even the prophets of the deceit of their own heart? They intend to cause my people to forget my name by their dreams which they each tell his neighbor, as their fathers forgot my name because of Baal. The prophet who has a dream, let him tell a dream; and he who has my word, let him speak my word faithfully. What is the straw to the wheat?” says Yahweh. “Isn’t my word like fire?” says Yahweh; “and like a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces?

“Therefore behold, I am against the prophets,” says Yahweh, “who each steal my words from his neighbor. Behold, I am against the prophets,” says Yahweh, “who use their tongues, and say, ‘He says.’ Behold, I am against those who prophesy lying dreams,” says Yahweh, “who tell them, and cause my people to err by their lies, and by their vain boasting; yet I didn’t send them or command them. They don’t profit this people at all,” says Yahweh.

Many books in the New Testament have warnings in them about the false teachers that were to come. The men who wrote these warnings had the writings that we are reading today from the Old Testament. It is very valuable and contemporary for us to consider what Jeremiah wrote down for us about the false prophets of his day. It allows us to recognize people like this when they try to deceive us today.

One thing that false prophets do is to use their dreams as proof of God’s direction in our lives. The problem with doing this is that God tells us clearly, here, that false prophets used dreams to spread lies about God’s direction. If I’m reading this correctly, God is telling us to not rely on the dream alone. Notice that God tells the prophets to go ahead and tell their dreams, but he also says to that those who have His word should speak His word too. God then mentions straw and wheat and that His word is like fire. Now straw cannot be eaten, but wheat can be. Somehow, a person must separate straw from wheat. I do know that God’s word is required to interpret the dreams that come from God so we can tell truthful dreams from lying ones. It could be that God is using this metaphor to explain this. Fire burns wheat and straw, but I think that a skilled farmer learns to apply fire to the straw and keep the wheat. The fact that God’s word is like a hammer, reminds me of how much more powerful propositional truth is compared to mysterious dreams. Once the clear truth is known, it crushes the foolish interpretations of a dream that don’t apply.

We need to be aware of the fact that there are those who will claim to speak the words of God that have not received a message from God at all. God tells us this right here and we must learn to critically separate the truth from a lie using the clear words we have in the Bible.

Day 106
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