Be Careful Who You Listen To?

 Warnings against False Teachings

Jeremiah 29:8 -9 "This is what the Lord of Heaven’s Armies, the God of Israel, says: “Do not let your prophets and fortune-tellers who are with you in the land of Babylon trick you. Do not listen to their dreams, because they are telling you lies in my name. I have not sent them,” says the Lord."

1 Timonthy 1:3-4 "When I left for Macedonia, I urged you to stay there in Ephesus and stop those whose teaching is contrary to the truth. 4 Don’t let them waste their time in endless discussion of myths and spiritual pedigrees. These things only lead to meaningless speculations,[a] which don’t help people live a life of faith in God."

Sometimes the reading from the Old Testament matches up with the reading from the New Testament. Such is the case today. Jeremiah warns the people that the false prophets in their midst are telling lies in the name of the Lord. They are claiming to receive messages from the Lord in their dreams, but they are tricking them.  They apparently also employed fortune tellers, which were seen as idolatry. This was the same idolatry which brought judgment from the Lord upon the Israelites. 

“There was a period of unrest all over the Babylonian empire, and prophets both in Jerusalem and in Babylon were proclaiming the imminent ending of the Exile, evidently believing that Babylon was on the point of collapse." Guzik

In the New Testament, Paul had left Timothy in Ephesus to shepherd the flock there. So called "prophets" there were also teaching myths, and bragging about how "spiritual" they were.  They spent their time talking about things that the ordinary Christian men and women didn't understand. Their pride of their "secret knowledge" puffed them up. Instead of being "puffed up", we are called to "build each other up". We call this "spiritual pride". It is pride about how your knowledge and experience about spiritual matters are only experienced by a few people like yourself. 

"Paul wanted to prevent the corruption that came when people gave authority to fables and endless genealogies instead of true doctrine. Silly distractions were also dangerous, because they took the place of godly edification which is in faith.Perhaps the endless genealogies had to do with Gnostic-type theories of “emanations” from God. Perhaps they were connected with Jewish-type legalism that sought righteousness by virtue of one’s ancestry. Or perhaps he had in mind doctrinal systems based on mystic readings of Old Testament genealogies." Guzik

False teachers still infiltrate the church today. In the NIV 1 Timothy 1:3 translates, "Stop those teaching to the contrary to the truth", "those teaching false doctrine". Doctrine is not a term you hear very often today. Some think the church invented "doctrine", or uses for its own particular denominational bias. But the command to teach sound doctrine is all over the bible. The term "doctrine" means, "a set of beliefs that are taught".  

When you are taught true doctrine, you are able to spot false doctrine. The most important doctrine is that Jesus, the only Son of God, came in the flesh, died on the cross though he was sinless, and rose from the dead, after three days. If we trust in His life, death and resurrection by faith, we will be saved. 

From the this statement we get the doctrine that "Jesus is both fully God and fully man". If Jesus wasn't truly a man, he could not have died. If he were not truly God, he would have had to die for his own sins not ours. 

Because Jesus is both God and man, he could provide the grace we didn't deserve and the righteousness we couldn't earn!

Be careful who you listen to. Make sure their teaching is alignment with sound doctrine! Make sure it centers on Jesus' life, death, and resurrection.