Please turn in your Bibles this morning to Romans chapter 16 as we look at the poisonous deceptions that have crept into the church and now are blowing into the church. On Thursday we completed our verse-by-verse study of Paul’s letter to the Romans and what a letter! If we were to title this letter we would call it The Gospel According To Grace as Paul takes us through the salvation process, a free gift of God to us. He shows us our condemnation, justification, sanctification, election and finally application.
As Paul concludes his letter he speaks of the men and women of faith in Rome, 24 people (17 men and 7 women) and then he mentions 9 other people who were not in Rome but truly a blessing to Paul. Before Paul says good-bye to the brethren in Rome he is going to give them a warning. Now here at Calvary Chapel, from time-to-time, we like to give out PSA’s or Public Service Announcements to inform you and warn you of various issues. So, before we get into our text this morning, let me give to you this very important Public Service Announcement dealing with these safety tips. You should:
1. Avoid riding in automobiles because they are responsible for 20% of all fatal accidents.
2. Do not stay at home because 17% of all accidents occur in the home.
3. Avoid walking on streets or sidewalks because 14% of all accidents occur to pedestrians.
4. Avoid traveling by air, rail, or water because 16% of all accidents involve these forms of transportation.
5. Of the remaining 33%, 32% of all deaths occur in hospitals. Above all else, avoid hospitals.
You will be pleased to learn that only .001% of all deaths occur in worship services in church, and these are usually related to previous physical disorders. Therefore, logic tells us that the safest place for you to be at any given point in time is at church!
Bible study is safe too. The percentage of deaths during Bible study is even less.
- Gayle Erwin, Servant Quarters, January, February, March 2004
I hope this has been helpful to you and it is good to see you here at church, since it is the safest place to be! Now, in saying that, in some churches, because of what is being taught, spiritually speaking, it can be the most dangerous place to be. Here in Romans chapter 16 Paul is giving a warning to the believers in Rome and to see what that warning is all about, let’s begin reading in Romans chapter 16, starting in verse 17 and see what the Lord has for us this morning.
Paul is exhorting the brethren in Rome to keep an eye on, be on guard for, pay attention to those who are causing divisions and offenses within the church or among believers. Please understand that Paul is not speaking of non-essential doctrines, minor interpretations, personal taste but those who are coming against the truth’s of God, the Word of God, those who are coming with their own doctrine! Even in the early church there were those who came in with their own personal agenda, not the truth, to try and gather a following towards their non-biblical beliefs, and we still see that today!
The “divisions” that Paul is speaking of is that of false doctrine coming in and dividing the church. The idea here is that people will draw others to their false doctrine and cause dissensions, discord and finally division among believers. I remember about 10 or more years ago a couple of men started coming to Calvary Chapel of Elk Grove and they came with their own personal agenda. They began telling the people that the only books of the Bible we are to read are those of Paul for every other one is for Jews! Pastor Phil, after a Sunday morning service, saw these men with a group of people around them, and Pastor Phil questioned them and then told them they could not teach their doctrine here at Calvary. They told Pastor Phil, “Who gave you the right to tell us what we can and can’t say?” Pastor Phil said, “The Lord!” You see, Pastor Phil was watching out for the sheep that God had entrusted to him and I feel the same way!
Then Paul speaks of “offenses” or SKANDALON in the Greek, which speaks of a stumbling block or a trap that is set to snare someone with their false doctrine. I have seen people do this also, dangle something spiritual as if it is from God and yet it goes contrary to God’s Word, and they are trying to gather a following to their heresy!
Too often Christians are not on guard and they can be easily swayed to these false doctrines, they can be entrapped by them, and thus, Paul’s warning to the believers in Rome is to avoid them. Don’t debate them, don’t spend all your time learning their false doctrine, stay away from them. Do not provide a platform for them to spread their false doctrine – stay alert, protect young believers from their heresy!
Paul, warning the Ephesian elders said, “Therefore I testify to you this day that I am innocent of the blood of all men. For I have not shunned to declare to you the whole counsel of God. Therefore take heed to yourselves and to all the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood. For I know this, that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock. Also from among yourselves men will rise up, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after themselves. Therefore watch, and remember that for three years I did not cease to warn everyone night and day with tears. So now, brethren, I commend you to God and to the word of His grace, which is able to build you up and give you an inheritance among all those who are sanctified.” Acts 20:26-32. Do you see the warning, teach your sheep the Word of God, watch over them, protect them, because men are waiting to come in and destroy them with their heresies!
Also, Jesus warned us of false prophets who disguise themselves as believers. He said in Matthew 7:15-16, “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes from thornbushes or figs from thistles? Even so, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit.”
Why such a warning? Because they are not shepherds, but wolves in sheep’s clothing trying to deceive the sheep and devour the sheep with their false doctrine. They are not serving the Lord but their own extravagant lifestyles at times, they are satisfying their own desires instead of denying self, taking up the cross and following Jesus. They instead are focused on their own ideas, their own theology! And they are smooth with their talk, look at how the Mormons seem to portray themselves, they want us to believe they are Christians, and thus, they call themselves The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Their commercials are very well done, they give out a King James Bible but their theology of Jesus is nothing more than a doctrine of demons, they are not Christian and they are deceiving many to follow them!
I do realize that many today say we are not to judge others, but that is ridiculous. We are not to judge their heart motives but we are to judge their teaching, what they are saying! Jesus tells us we can tell if they are false teachers by their fruit, is it real or is it fake fruit? You see, is what they are teaching found in the Word of God or are they drawing you into another gospel, a perverted gospel?
Paul, in II Timothy 2:14-19 tells us, “Remind them of these things, charging them before the Lord not to strive about words to no profit, to the ruin of the hearers. Be diligent to present yourself approved to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. But shun profane and idle babblings, for they will increase to more ungodliness. And their message will spread like cancer. Hymenaeus and Philetus are of this sort, who have strayed concerning the truth, saying that the resurrection is already past; and they overthrow the faith of some. Nevertheless the solid foundation of God stands, having this seal: ‘The Lord knows those who are His,’ and, ‘Let everyone who names the name of Christ depart from iniquity.’” Notice that Paul even named names, why? To warn the sheep of these men who were spreading false doctrines!
This morning I would like to warn you about some destructive things that are going on in the church and then we will look at how we can protect ourselves from falling prey to these doctrines of demons. Before we do that, let me share with you this story to drive home the point I am making here! We are told:
There are a thousand or more varieties of mushrooms that are good to eat . . . The most dreaded of the poisonous mushrooms are two members of the Amanita group. One is the death cup, and the other is the fly amanita.
The death cup grows in the woods from June until fall. Its poison acts like the venom of a rattlesnake, as it separates the corpuscles in the blood from the serum. No antidote is known for the poison of the death cup. The only hope for anyone who has eaten it is to clean out his stomach promptly with a stomach pump. It is small wonder that one variety is known as the destroying angel.
The death cup has often been mistaken for the common mushroom. A person should not make this mistake if he observes carefully. The poisonous plant has white gills, white spores, and the fatal poison cup around the stem. The plant that is safe to eat has pink gills, brown spores, and no cup. Many of the mistakes come from picking it in the button stage, for it does not show all these differences until it has grown larger.
- Family Survival in the American Jungle, Steve Farrar, pp. 17-18
The point here is that you need to know what you are eating, what is good for you and what will kill you, you need to be on guard, you need to pay attention. You see, if you know what is good for you, then when you come across something that is bad, you will notice it and avoid it, you would not play with it because you know it will kill you! The same is true with false doctrine, the doctrines of demons and as we go through some of these examples, I think you will clearly see how deadly some of these are. They may start our subtle, but they are still deadly.
First of all, Kenneth Hagin has stated:
“The Lord said, ‘I’ll have to correct your theology a little’ (I’d been indoctrinated with all that ‘religious’ thinking, and unconsciously I still thought that maybe it was wrong to have the things of this world.) . . . ‘In the first place – and this will help you – don’t pray about money anymore; that is, the way you’ve been praying. Claim whatever you need.’”
What does that kind of theology feed? Our flesh and we don’t need to feed it anymore; we need to crucify the flesh! That is why the Name it Claim it, the Blab it Grab it doctrine is so popular today and yet it is wrong! In Matthew 6:31-33 Jesus said, “Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For after all these things the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.” You see, God will provide what we NEED not what we WANT! And truthfully, God has blessed us so much but let us not hold onto things like they were gods!
Kenneth Copeland has stated:
“I say this and repeat it so it don’t upset you too bad. When I read in the Bible where (Jesus) says, ‘I Am’, say, ‘Yes, I am, too!’ . . . You impart humanity into a child that’s born of you . . . Because you are a human, you have implanted the nature of humanity into that born child.”
“God is God. He is a Spirit . . . And He imparted in you when you were born again – Peter said it just as plain; he said, ‘We are partakers of the divine nature.’ That nature is life eternal in absolute perfection, and that was imparted, injected into your spirit man, and you have that imparted into you by God just the same as you imparted into your child the nature of humanity.”
“That child wasn’t born a whale. It was born a human . . . Well, now, you don’t have a human, do you? No, you are one. You don’t have God in you. You are one.”
All I can say to that is “NOT!” This is nothing more than New Age philosophy dressed up into Christianity. It is what Shirley McLain and others are telling us, we are gods, we just have forgotten that we are gods and we need to be reminded. Man, I hope you don’t go to a doctor who forgets that he is a doctor at times!
In Isaiah 42:8 we are told, “I am the LORD, that is My name; And My glory I will not give to another, Nor My praise to carved images.” Also in Isaiah, the Lord tells us in Isaiah 44:6-8, “Thus says the LORD, the King of Israel, And his Redeemer, the LORD of hosts: ‘I am the First and I am the Last; Besides Me there is no God. And who can proclaim as I do? Then let him declare it and set it in order for Me, Since I appointed the ancient people. And the things that are coming and shall come, Let them show these to them. Do not fear, nor be afraid; Have I not told you from that time, and declared it? You are My witnesses. Is there a God besides Me? Indeed there is no other Rock; I know not one.’” Again, this is a false doctrine, a doctrine of demons to say that we are gods. This is a foundational issue and thus it is important to know who has stated these things so you can avoid them like the plague for they are deadly!
Benny Hinn says this regarding our regeneration, what happens when we are saved:
“When you say, ‘I am saved,’ what are you saying? You’re saying ‘I am a Christian.’ What does that word mean? It means ‘I’m anointed.’ Do you know that the word ‘anointed’ means? It means ‘Christ.’ When you say, ‘I’m a Christian’, you’re saying ‘I am Meshiach’ in the Hebrew. ‘I’m a little Messiah walking on earth’, in other words. That’s a shocking revelation. . . You are a little god on earth running around . . . Say after me, “Within me is a God-man.’ Say it again, “Within me is a God-man.’ Now lets say [it] even better than that. Let’s say ‘I am a God-man.’”
As I have already stated, we are not gods, but for those who would judge this teaching or any of his teachings or others from this group, Benny Hinn has this to say to you and this is from Paul and Jan Crouch’s show on TBN:
“You wonderful people of God, quit attacking men of God by name! Somebody’s attacking me because of something I’m teaching! Let me tell you something brother, you watch it! . . . I don’t mind if they attack Benny and the way he is and the way he walks, but don’t attack the anointing on my life; don’t attack this man of God [Paul Crouch]. There is a group here in California that thinks they are the judgment seat of Christ! They judge everything you do. Listen here, fella, let me tell you something: you’re not my judge; Jesus is my judge! You walk around with your stiff lip and collar on your neck – dear God in heaven I wish I could just – ooh!
They call it a ministry, my foot! You know, I’ve looked for one verse in the Bible – I just can’t seem to find it – one verse that says, ‘If you don’t like ‘em, kill ‘em!’ I really wish I could find it! But there’s nowhere in the Bible where it says it! . . .
Sometimes I wish God would give me a Holy Ghost Machine gun! I’d blow your head off!”
When you are backed into a corner and your false doctrine is exposed, you fight back attacking others with non-biblical things. We are to look at what is being taught, as I have said and judge false teachers, false prophets, not kill them as Benny Hinn would love to do with those who expose his false teachings. Listen to what Paul said of the church in Berea regarding what they did after he taught, after Paul taught them, “Then the brethren immediately sent Paul and Silas away by night to Berea. When they arrived, they went into the synagogue of the Jews. These were more fair-minded than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness, and searched the Scriptures daily to find out whether these things were so.” Acts 17:10-11. You see, they checked out the teachings of Paul to see if they were in the Scriptures and Paul applauded them for doing this and we must do the same. Don’t believe anything I say unless you can find the Scriptures supporting it, do your homework!
Then there is Robert Schuller who makes many unbiblical, many outrageous statements that are nothing more than doctrines of demons. He has said:
“I don’t think anything has been done in the name of Christ and under the banner of Christianity that has proven more destructive to human personality and, hence, counterproductive to the evangelism enterprise than the often crude, uncouth, and unchristian strategy of attempting to make people aware of their lost and sinful condition.”
- Christianity Today, August 10, 1984, pp. 23-24
“I believe that the responsibility in this Age is to ‘positivize’ religion. Now this probably doesn’t have much bearing to you people, being Unity people, you’re positive. But I talk a great deal to groups that are not positive . . . even to what we would call Fundamentalists who deal constantly with words like sin, salvation, repentance, guilt, that sort of thing. So when I’m dealing with people . . . what we have to do is positivize the words that have classically only had a negative interpretation.”
- Unity Ministers Conference
In his book, Self Esteem: The New Reformation, listen to how he redefines biblical terms to make them meaningless to us in regards to what God has to say. He says:
Sin – “Any human condition or act that robs God of glory by stripping one of his children of their right to divine dignity, that deep lack of trust that separates me from God and leaves me with a sense of shame and unworthiness, any act or thought that robs myself or another human being of his or her self-esteem.” (Page 14).
“Guilt – “loss of self-esteem.” (Pate 65).
Hell – “the loss of pride that naturally follows separation from God. A person is in hell when he has lost his self-esteem.” (Pages 14-15).
Salvation – “rescue from shame to glory, guilt to pride, fear to love, distrust to faith, hypocrisy to honesty.” (Page 151).
Being born again – “means that we must be changed from a negative to a positive self-image, from inferiority to self-esteem, from fear to love, from doubt to trust.” (Page 68).
Repentance – “positive, dynamic and highly-motivated redirection of life from a guilt-induced fear and its consequent withdrawal from the divine call to a caring, risky trust which promises the hope of glory, for yourself and your heavenly Father, through noble, human-need-filling achievements.” (Page 104).
Grace – “divine self-esteem.” (Page 95).
What can you say, if you know anything from the Scriptures you know those are false statements, they are not of God, they go contrary to what God has said in His Word! And sin is bad, it is evil and we must realize that we are sinners separated from God, too much self-esteem is the problem, we think we are better than we really are! I do realize that much of this is old from Robert Schuller, even though he still professes it and promotes it today. The thing that concerns me is that Robert Schuller is spoken of as the father of the “Seeker-Friendly” churches or the “Seeker-Sensitive” churches that have exploded on the scene today! According to T. A. McMahon:
“ . . . Last year, 100,000 church leaders attended at least one Willow Creek leadership conference. More than 250,000 pastors and church leaders from over 125 countries have attended Rick Warren’s Purpose Driven Church seminars. More than 60,000 pastors subscribe to his weekly email newsletter.”
Their basic approach to evangelism is marketing to see what the people of that community want in a church and then build a church around it; they give them what they want. They are trying to reach the “unchurched Harry and Marry.” The problem with that is as T. A. McMahon tells us:
“During the last 70 years, the percentage of this country’s population attending church has been relatively constant at about 43 percent. A spike of 49 percent in 1991 (years prior to today’s initial seeker-sensitive enthusiasm) gradually declined, returning to 42 percent in 2002 (www.barna.org). From where, then, do those mega-churches, which have outfitted themselves to accommodate the unchurched, get their members? Mostly from smaller churches that aren’t interested in or that can’t afford the fleshly attractions. And what of the supposed horde of unchurched Harrys and Marys who have been assembled? They constitute a very small part of mega-church congregations. During his year of researching Willow Creek, G. A. Pritchard, in his book Willow Creek Seeker Services (Backer Book House, 1996), estimated that the targeted unchurched made up only between 10 and 15 percent of the 16,000 or so who attended weekend services!”
“Thousands of churches here and abroad have completely restructured themselves as outreach centers for the unchurched. This, by the way, is not biblical. The church is for the maturing and equipping of the saints, who then go out to reach the lost.”
“In order to keep them coming back, they have avoided the thorough teaching of Scripture in favor of positive, uplifting messages designed to make them feel good about themselves.”
- T. A. McMahon, The Berean Call, March 2004
I am not judging their hearts but I am exposing their errors in teaching. If you can’t talk about sin because it is a bad word in church, then why do people need a Savior? You see, it is the teaching of Robert Schuller that has infiltrated many of these churches today! And think about it, nowhere in the Bible are you taught to feed the goats, you are to feed the sheep the Word of God and as the goats or the unsaved hear the Word of God, because the Word of God is living and powerful, it will transform their lives. Yes, these types of “Seeker-Friendly” churches are growing very quickly, their numbers increase because they are entertaining, they are feeding the flesh and not the spirit. I know a pastor who had to drop out of a prayer meeting with local pastors that he was involved in for years because many of these churches have now moved away from teaching the Word of God and are now in the entertainment business!
H. A. Ironside put it perfectly, and keep in mind that he went to be with the Lord back on January 15, 1951, and yet look at what he had to say about the church back then and I wonder what he would think of it today? He said:
The Church of God has gone into the entertainment business! People must be amused, and as the church needs the people’s money, the church must supply the demand and meet the craving! How else are godless hypocrites to be held together? So the picture show and entertainment . . . take the place of the gospel address and the solemn worship of God. And, thus, Christless souls are lulled to sleep and made to feel “religious” while gratifying every carnal desire under the sanction of the sham called the church! And the end? What an awakening [in eternity]!
- H. A. Ironside
How do we protect ourselves from these polluted doctrines?
By being in the Word of God.
Paul tells us to be wise in that which is good and “simple”
or “innocent” concerning evil.
The Greek words “simple” or “innocent”
is AKERAIOS (ak-er’-an-yos) and it speaks of being “unmixed,
simple, pure.” In
the Greek culture it was used of wine that was not diluted or
metal that was not weakened in any way by impurities!
This word is used two other times in the New Testament,
first in Matthew 10:16 where it is translated “harmless”
and we are told, “Behold, I send you out as sheep in
the midst of wolves. Therefore be wise as serpents and harmless
as doves.”
And again in Philippians 2:15 we are told, “that
you may become blameless and harmless, children of God
without fault in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation,
among whom you shine as lights in the world.”
Don’t let evil, don’t let false doctrine, drag you down, cause you to be impure, mixed-up, but let the Word of God lift you up! The Word of God is a restraint to keep us from evil, “How can a young man cleanse his way? By taking heed according to Your word. With my whole heart I have sought You; Oh, let me not wander from Your commandments! Your word I have hidden in my heart, That I might not sin against You.” Psalm 119:9-11.
It is a guide to lead us, “Direct my steps by Your word, And let no iniquity have dominion over me.” Psalm 119:133.
It shows us what is in our heart, “For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. And there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are naked and open to the eyes of Him to whom we must give account.” Hebrews 4:12-13.
It is our Spiritual food, “as newborn babes, desire the pure milk of the word, that you may grow thereby.” I Peter 2:2.
Folks, my responsibility as a pastor, as a shepherd over this flock, is “for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ; that we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting, but, speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head — Christ — from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love.” Ephesians 4:12-16. If you don’t want to be blown away you need to fill yourself up with the Word of God, apply it to your life!
The end result is this, Paul tells us in Romans 16:20, “And the God of peace will crush Satan under your feet shortly. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. Amen.” Don’t let Satan crush you with His destructive heresies but stand strong in the faith and God will put Satan in his place, he will be crushed! You see, by our standing strong in the faith, we are halting the work of Satan, crushing his efforts in a sense until the Lord comes and crushes him shortly!
I know we have spent a lot of time on this, but I believe it is important, especially in the days we are living in where we must contend earnestly for the faith that has been entrusted to us. This letter to the Romans is powerful, it is truly The Gospel According to Grace, let us not lose sight of what we are to be doing as Paul said in Romans 1:16-17, “For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, ‘The just shall live by faith.’” Folks, we need God’s grace to strengthen us, His Wisdom to expose false teachers, and His grace to comfort us as we wait for the day for Satan to be crushed!