| Sermon Summary by Robbins Jesuraj |
As we mature in Christ, God helps us to enhance the skills of discerning within His church. In the history of Bible and church, false prophets keep rising and continue to confuse His children to fall into their traps. Jesus, Paul, Peter and John delivered multiple warnings in identifying and addressing false teachings within the believing communities.
Paul warns of any sort of new teaching apart from the orthodox belief of the church to be taken with carefulness (Eph 4:14). Anything curious can be spurious. The false teachers are good story tellers and can captivate their audience with smooth talk and fair speech (II Tim 4:4, Rom 16:18).
As C.S. Lewis says “By mixing little truth to it, they had made their lie far stronger.”. They secretively introduce lies with craftiness and deceitfulness (II Pet 2:1, Eph 4:14). They would create conflicts and would like to split people and induce them against each other (I Tim 2:4). They can misuse godliness for their own personal gain and crave with greediness (I Tim 6:5, II Pet 2:3).
As days go by, they can become forceful and slip into homes and gain control (II Tim 3:6) and become aggressive like ravenous wolves (Matt 7:15). They would take people away from sound doctrines and the Scripture based truths (I John 4:1-3).
As a body of Christ, the church is called to be vigilant as well as confront such false teachers with wisdom and love. Also, at times, we might have to flee from such traps and seek help as needed. False Teaching is a reality even for today as well as tomorrow. So, let’s discern well like the Bareans in Acts 17!