False Teachers and their Golden Calves

Caveat:

Last week I began to put everything I believe about false teaching into a small little blog. That proved impossible. So today I've decided to refocus and put a call out to my church family and anyone who wants to talk about what I present and challenge. Let's ask questions and try to bring a uniformed and coherency to our thoughts concerning false teaching.

Then all the people tore off the gold rings which were in their ears and brought them to Aaron. He took this from their hand, and fashioned it with a graving tool and made it into a molten calf; and they said, "this is your god, O Israel, who brought you up from the land of Egypt." Now when Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it; and Aaron made a proclamation and said, "Tomorrow shall be a feast to the Lord."

Exodus 32:3-5

I start with this old testament story because I think it is a great example for the basis for what a Christian should deem as false. The first time I came across this story was probably in a children's Sunday school setting. The moral of the story back then seemed to be "don't worship idols like TV or sports heroes." Now I'm a little upset that the main point of this story was not proclaimed and driven as deep into me. What I read in Exodus 32 is a very clear message that correct Theology is vitally important. Jesus says in John 4 that "the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth... God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth." Theology is that truth side of worship. The Israelites didn't believe they were giving credit to another God in Exodus 32. The problem was their mode of worship and their Theology. They believed falsely of their God. How did they come to these false beliefs of God? There must have been false teaching present. Some Egyptian idea of God had joined itself to the true knowledge of God passed down through Jacob's sons. We call this Synergism. The result is a golden calf. A perversion of the Truth. Moses then instructs the tribe of Levi to kill three thousand men responsible for this offense against God. Talk about Theological purification. I don't mean that to be funny.

Today our churches are filled with many different theological ideas. Men lean on other things than the Bible for their theological code. As a result many have set up theological golden calves. They have a view of God that is faulty and perhaps a half truth mixed with a lie. Our Lord has allowed many of these calves to stand unchallenged. I would like to remind the reader of the church in Ephesus whom Paul addresses directly and indirectly in the New Testament. Paul himself set in place the eldership in Ephesus. For nearly three years he discipled and labored to have the church founded in Biblical Truth and Faith in Christ. Finally Paul addresses his elders in Acts 20 before his departure. Paul prophetically tells them to their faces that from among them will come wolves. 

Imagine the pastor of your church is handing over the church to you and a handful of other elders and says, "By the way some of you guys will turn out to be false teachers. Basically some of you men are enemies of God who like Satan want a measure of glory for themselves. You'll make up your own teachings and proclaim them so that people will leave sound Christian beliefs and follow you because you are more eloquent and your message makes men feel good about themselves and their own works." Ouch.

When facing Acts 20, my mind is blown. Paul elevates the gospel above the elder. He has made these men elders so that means that they meet the qualifications of church leaders in 1st Timothy and Titus. Yet he knows that some of them are not truly saved. He cannot be sure who, but the Spirit has told him that some of the men standing before him are like wolves in sheep's clothing. This must have been heartbreaking for the Apostle Paul. Since God did not deemed it necessary to sovereignly weed out the false teachers before they began teaching falsely, we can only guess that He must have meant this to be a Deuteronomy 13 situation. God values the testing of our faith. God wants the real followers of Christ to know who the false converts are. 

Yesterday I was talking to my brother Jack on the phone. We were talking about Persecution the church in America. I think it is obvious that a lot of our problems in our American churches will be solved when persecution comes. Our golden calves (false ideas about God) and our modes of worshiping God (how we glorify God through our lives) will be melted away. At that point the true worshippers of God will be evident. Those who's unseparated [theology and life] is a daily blessing to the church and a glory to God.

 

But the Spirit explicitly says that in later times some will fall away from the faith, paying attention to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons, by means of hypocrisy of liars seared in their own conscience as with a branding iron...

1st Timothy 4:1,2