Daily Archive

2 Peter 2:18 “For speaking out arrogant words of vanity, they entice by sensual lusts of the flesh, those who barely escape from the ones who conducted themselves in error.” He says they are great loud, swelling words of emptiness, and this means literally it’s something that is just excessive. You can’t quantify it. It just goes on and on and on and on. Everywhere you turn, they’re saying something else that’s not true, and they just go on and on to try to defend what they’re saying. The heart of these excessive words is the root of haughtiness, thinking that I have a word for you that you need from me. Listen, the only word that I could ever have and the only word that you ever need is a word from God.

We’re must be preaching the word, not my word, not my opinion, not what I figured out. If I preach to you what I figured out, it’d be a short sermon. Be careful there. We interpret the Word and we apply the Word because it is the Word of God. It’s what He has to say to us. It’s not based on this haughty idea that I’m such a great thinker, that I’ve figured out a way that I can teach something that’s going to change your life.

The only thing that I can teach that can change your life is the Gospel of Jesus Christ. That’s it. The power is not in the preacher. We learn that from the life of Jonah, don’t we? The power is not in the preacher. The power is in the Word of God in the hands of the Spirit when it’s faithfully proclaimed. And at times, even when it’s unfaithfully proclaimed, because when God’s Word goes out, He always uses it. You understand that?

And in 2 Timothy 3, when we are told perilous times are coming, Paul writes to Timothy and he says, “But know this, that in the last days difficult times will come. For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, without gentleness, without love for good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God.” There is the definition of the age.

These people, we’re told, have “holding to a form of godliness, but having denied its power. Keep away from such men as these.” If somebody is teaching you how to overcome sin, and they themselves can’t overcome sin, stop listening to them. Right?

Now, don’t just believe it because I tell it to you. You need to know me, you need to question me, you need to hold me accountable, anybody that you listen to. And here’s the danger of all of the good doctrine that we have available out there in the Internet on TV and radio today. The danger is you can get teachers in there who you’re not quite sure in who you don’t know and who they sound really good. But when you listen, and you hear, and you see, sometimes people are so surprised and shocked by scandals around certain ministries, we really shouldn’t be.

So false teachers give us empty promises, excessive great swelling words of haughtiness, and it also says there they entice through the lust of the flesh. This means that what they tell you is superficially attractive, but ultimately it’s spiritually unproductive. It sounds good. I remember hearing preachers and flip around on channels sometimes and check out new people on the internet and you listen, and at first man this sounds really good, man this is spot -on, oh wait a minute, and then they say something and it becomes obvious and you just know.

Well what we find out here is that they’re not going after the people who know, they’re going after the people who don’t know the truth, and the way they hook them is by appealing to their lust, by getting them to find what they want in God. “Come to God and He will give you and He will be to you what you want.” But this is an appeal not to the truth that we are built to glorify God, that’s why we were created, but it is an enticement of the flesh, superficially attractive but spiritually unproductive.

You see, the false teachers want you to come to God to satisfy yourself. God is here to give you and to do for you and to provide for you and to create for you all of these things according to your wish list. Come to God with your list of wants, quote the right verse, say the right prayer and God then must do whatever you ask. When you entice someone through the lust of the flesh to satisfy themselves, really what you’re doing is making an idol of self, you’re really worshipping self and you’re making God your servant! You’re treating God as if He was a genie in a bottle.

And this is how God is presented. He’s either the angry old man in the sky who has to be appeased, waiting to squash us like a bug, or He’s a genie right out of a bottle and once you know the right spell, I’m sorry, the right prayer, and you think this is funny? It’s happening today. People are using Tarot Cards with Christian names now. They’re calling them Providence Cards and Blessing Cards and you can go to a spiritual reader in the church and they’ll go over these cards with you to reveal God’s plan.

This is paganism, pure and simple, and people are so easily deceived, but it’s what they want to hear. They want to know their future is going to be better. You know what? Your future is absolutely guaranteed to be better because one day Jesus is coming for you. Between now and then, there may not be much better in there. It might be tough and it might be rough and there might be prices to pay as we follow Christ.

You know, really, sometimes I think our main frustration is just that self keeps getting in the way. We need to mortify the deeds of the flesh and we need to understand that yes, there will be better days. But the best day is the day we see Him face -to -face, the day that we see Him and we’re done with sin.

Can you imagine standing in the presence of Christ in a glorified body, not even wanting to sin? There being no lust, no desire, no temptation. Come on, Lord Jesus, what are we waiting for? Come on. Well, they entice through the lust of the flesh. They want you to satisfy yourself. They want you to satisfy yourself by telling you that your finances will get figured out, that things will run better and work better, relationships, cars, jobs, whatever else. You fill in the blank. They take a pain point and they’re selling to you. These false teachers are motivational speakers. They’re telling you something that you can do to make yourself better.

Jesus does not ever ask us to come to Him to make ourselves better. He asks us to come to Him and die to ourselves so that He can live through us. Now will that be better? Yes, because it’s His life. It’s His fruit, He’s prepared for us so that we might bear it. But it’s not self -serving.

These false teachers speak enticing words. It says, through the lust of the flesh and through lewdness, the word is licentiousness. They make grace a license to sin. They tell you that God has given you all of these things, and now you can do whatever you want. Now that you are walking by grace, in grace, there is no more law. There is no more law, they say. Law doesn’t have a place in the life of the believer.

That means, once you’re saved, once you’ve prayed that prayer, once you’ve walked the aisle and asked Jesus into your little heart, then you can do whatever you want. And when you die, you’re going to heaven. That false assurance right there will find more people standing before Christ in shock to hear Him say, “Depart from me, I never knew you.” Because I prayed a prayer, walked an aisle, shook a preacher’s hand, and I was guaranteed that that took care of it, and there wasn’t anything else I had to do.

We have thrown holiness out the window, and we’ve made it about happiness. “Come to Jesus, and He will make you happy.” And you may be happy for a while, but you will not be finally satisfied. And if you are not walking in holiness, then you are walking in lawlessness, and those are exactly the ones that Jesus says. “I say to them, ‘Depart from Me, I never knew you.’”

Now, let me make something clear. When Jesus declares, “Depart from Me, I never knew you,” those who expected heaven and who find themselves in hell, this is the one thing that you’re going to know. They can’t complain, and they won’t complain, because they will have seen Jesus face to face, and their knee would have bent and worshiped Him. At this point, it’s not saving faith, but it’s an understanding that they are being rightfully and righteously judged.

You see, the people in hell aren’t complaining that they’ve been judged. They know that’s exactly where they’re supposed to be, because they’ve seen God and all of His holiness without a mediator, and there is no way to exist in that atmosphere. You understand, when you see and when you stand before the judge, that there is no excuse. There will be no pleas at the great white throne for a second chance. When sinners stand before a holy and living God, there will be no plea. There will only be this confession. “Every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.”

But they’re enticed. Satisfy yourself. Make an idol of yourself. Fulfill yourself. Find your satisfaction doing these things. They make grace a license to sin. Paul wrote in Romans 6:1-2, “What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase? May it never be! How shall we who died to sin still live in it?”

We have to see sin for what it is. We have to reject it. We have to run from it. And the problem is the false teachers are enticing you to continue sinning. But they present it as if it was righteousness. “Do this, and you’ll find spiritual satisfaction. Say this. Practice this. Do these things.” And at its heart, it is absolute paganism. It is the service and the worship of self.