Dr. Bingham’s Lesson for August 29, 2010
Last in Series on The Nature of Scripture
“False Teachers” – Jude
History repeats itself because we weren’t listening the first time.
Evangelicals are in danger of loosing their influence because they tend to try to adjust their message to suit the changes in culture. Michael Spencer, writing in the Christian Science Monitor, said that evangelicals are in danger of becoming irrelevant because they are becoming less doctrinaire. Christine Wicker, in her book, forecasted from an unbeliever’s point of view the death of evangelicalism because American culture was becoming less doctrinaire. Americans, in general, do not want to be taught a Christianity that emphasizes doctrines as central to its identity; that is, they do not want to be taught that you must believe particular things about God, Christ, salvation, humanity, and particular things about the future.
Christian Smith is a sociologist at a university on the east coast. In his book, he concluded that, contrary to popular opinion, American teenagers are very interested in religion. However, the average American teenager is interested in religion only to the extent that it is moralistic, therapeutic deism. They want the comfort and security of having some moral guidelines but which is not too morally narrowing. They want their religion to be therapeutic in that they want to attend services that make them feel good. They are not coming to religion because they want to believe truth. They don’t want to believe in God as He is; they just want to avoid the consequences of living immorally and to feel good.
Deism is a view of God that became popular in the eighteenth century. Its core belief is that God created the world in a very precise way, like a Swiss watchmaker would make a watch; God, after setting the world in motion, turned His back on the world and now has nothing more to do with it; the world continues to function on its own in the way that God designed it; according to deism, God does not intervene in its affairs or its functioning; for deism there was no need of Jesus Christ to enter the world as Savior for any of its inhabitants and no need of God to answer any prayer.
Generally, American teenagers are only interested in a religion that gives them some moral guidance and makes them feel better, and they have a minimalistic and, ultimately, heretical view of God.
If Christianity is to continue to be the Christianity that was handed down to us by the apostles, we need to continue to emphasize that the Bible teaches certain things that we are to believe and it teaches certain things we are to dismiss and, on certain things, there is no middle ground.
Jude 3-10
Jude wanted to write a letter of encouragement to his congregation but had to write about false teachers who had slipped in among them. These false teachers showed up not looking like what they are but, as Jesus said, wolves in sheep’s clothing. They are like clouds without rain. They look like caring teachers but in reality are there to lead astray. They turn the grace of God into license for immorality, denying the Lord God and Jesus Christ. They discourage commitment to a moral life style. They endlessly talk of grace but present it as a license to unbounded immorality. They deny that Jesus is the Sovereign Lord of the Universe. Just because someone talks about Jesus does not necessarily mean that they are saved. You cannot just accept a Jesus of any kind, but you must receive Him as He really is, what the Bible tells us He is. It is necessary to your salvation that you recognize Jesus Christ as the everlasting God the Son, to whom God the Father has given the duty of judging the righteous and the unrighteous. These false teachers do not like living with restrictions or submitting to anything. They defile their bodies and despise authority and dignitaries. We do not have the authority to rebuke spirit beings; only God has that authority; therefore, Michael the archangel called upon the Lord to rebuke Satan when he was struggling with him over the body of Moses. But these false teachers had no reluctance to do so.
Jude demands that the recipients of his letter contend for the faith, that they proclaim the central doctrines given to them by the apostles, about Christ and about grace, about God and about salvation, about humanity and the eternal things to come, the faith once for all delivered. There aren’t doctrines about God for America and doctrines about God for Ethiopia. There aren’t doctrines about salvation for the eighteenth century and doctrines about salvation for the twenty-first century. The faith does not shift; the doctrines of the Bible do not change. They are given once for all.
Jude 20
Jude urges his listeners to “build themselves up in their most holy faith and pray in the Holy Spirit.” Join together in reminding each other of those crucial, unchangeable elements of the faith. Commit to build each other up in the unchanging elements of the faith and pray in the Holy Spirit for each other that we will remain true to those unchangeable elements of the teaching of Scripture.
