July 3, 2005 – Holding Fast the Good ConfessionTopical – Pastor Bob DeWaay
(Yes, I know Bob has been demoted, but his teaching has been very good, and since then, he has been submitting to correction, which as he says here in this sermon is a mark of a preacher/teacher who is of the spirit of truth.)
Bob makes a case about not being straightforward about the truth of the gospel. Evasion is denial.
In Galatians according to Paul's report: "The problem wasn't Peter's doctrine it was his practice."
I think this applies to Dan Kimball, and this is why many are suspicious of him and why it is completely unreasonable of Chris to ask us to do 'research' and demand proof that Dan has taught heresy. Based on that unreasonable request, he has accused many of lying about a brother in Christ. But silence or a lack of evidence = denial so actually, the burden of proof is on Dan or Chris. Just today I found an
article from 2005 where Dan is quoting Henri Nouwen favorably about 'forgiving the church' if it hurts us. What does the apostate mystic Nouwen know about the real church? Maybe what he really should have called this article was "Learning how to Ignore the Church's Valid Correction."
Sure, on
Chris's Monday interview with Dan, Dan made some rudimentary confessions that Christ died for his sins on the cross. But how is that any different from what Mormons or Roman Catholics believe? The Galatians and the Judaizers made this confession as well, but received a strong rebuke from Paul anyway for that one little iota they added.
I hope Chris will listen to this and see that we aren't all running around with 'loose screws' just because we don't just take his word as gospel truth.
Partial Transcript:
"What we're being called to is a forthright public confession of the person and work of Jesus Christ that is so profound that our lives will never be the same again because we have confessed this, and that we are willing to live out the implications of that confession by God's grace.
...We may fail but God will bring us back...
I want to show you how this matter of confessing is a discernment tool. This will give you an objective tool so that you can know when you hear a teaching, whether it's from God or not. This is absolutely objective. And you don't have to have some subjective buzzer that goes off when you hear something wrong like one guy claimed. It doesn't work that way. If that was true, there wouldn't be 25,000 people in this church down in Texas [Lakewood]. Their 'buzzer' isn't going off. IF they were to follow this (because that pastor was on Larry King Live and didn't confess), they would have known. You have an objective tool. Here's what it says.
"Beloved do not believe every spirit but tests the spirits to see whether it is from God." Why? "Because many false prophets have gone out into the world." Now here's something we just learned. The spirits are speaking through people. False prophets have gone out and they don't come out with a sign that says 'false.' They don't wear a certain kind of clothing to mark them out from the true. The only way you're going to know when you're hearing a false prophet is to use objective criteria for discernment. They are coming out with a message to preach that comes from a spiritual source they say is coming from the Holy Spirit. We don't have to just wonder. We don't have to look and see how many people were shouting and jumping how many were slain under the power, how many got all excited or how many gave an offering or how many say this is a wonderful man of God. All of that is distracting. It doesn't help.
We need to use the tool God gave us to objectively determine where the teaching came from. Let's read about it in verses 2 and 3. "By this you know the Spirit of God. Every Spirit that confesses!" Here's our word again that we're studying. Homologia "to say the same thing as." in the Greek. "Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God. and Every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. And this is the spirit of antichrist that you have heard is coming and is now already in the world. So there is an anointing, antichrist, anti christos, substitute anointing, so there are anointed ones out there who are claiming to speak for God, they claim to be great men of God, or women of God as the case may be and they claim to have the words of God, but we may be misled. We may be listening to something that's not from the Holy Spirit. So John wrote this so that we could know objectively and clearly who is speaking for God. And what he tells us is this. That those people who are anointed by the Holy Spirit as speaking from the Holy Spirit WILL CONFESS. Now this doesn't mean merely utter the words. You can put a gun to somebody's head and they can say "Jesus Christ came in the flesh, I'll admit it." The demons believe Jesus Christ came in the flesh. But they're not going to preach the gospel, because they're opposed to that. This confession has to do with everything I'm talking about today. The full orb of what a Christian confessor looks like. One who preaches the gospel of Jesus Christ, who without hypocrisy applies the implications of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and doesn't evade the gospel of Jesus Christ and who was willing to live accordingly even if it means coming under church discipline or correction like Peter did. Such a person will be glad to be corrected. A confessor confesses the person and work of Christ. Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is John's shorthand way of talking about the whole doctrine of the incarnation and everything that it has to do with.
"Coming in the flesh:" that implies pre-existence. Not just born the way anyone was born, he came as born of the virgin Mary. In the flesh he lived out his life. In the flesh he lived a sinless life. In the flesh he was nailed to the cross bodily. In the flesh, he literally shed real blood for sins and in the flesh he came out of the grave, bodily raised still bearing the marks of Calvary so that he could show Thomas, so that Thomas would believe in Jesus Christ. And that is the content and you can read every sermon in the book of Acts and we'll see what it looks like to confess Jesus Christ coming in the flesh. In boldness they proclaimed to all whether they were Jews gathered at Pentecost, God-fearers in the household of Cornelius, Jewish leaders listening to Stephen, Athenian philosophers on Mars Hill, jailers, the praetorian guard in Rome, whoever came in contact with the New Testament apostles heard the exact same message proclaimed bodly without equivocation, without fear, and wthout evasion: "Who is Jesus Christ, what did he do, and why do we need him? Repent and believe the gospel." That will be the hallmark the calling card of every true preacher who is from the Holy Spirit.
Now notice here it says "Every spirit that does not confess." Silence is enough to prove the person is not from God. They don't have to actually come out and deny because silence is a denial when confession is called for. You say nothing if you are called into a court of law to be a witness, and by the way the word witness "marturion," closely linked in the NT to the word homologia, because you want to make the good confession in front of many witnesses, that's what Timothy did. Now if you're called into court to bear witness to certain facts, you're asked to swear to tell the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Right? You're not there to evade. And if you're hauled before the court and you were there and you saw what happened, and you just won't say anything. I suppose you could plead the fifth if you were the guilty party, but let's say you're just a bystander who saw what happened. You have to say explicitly what you saw. You can't just shut up or evade or say nothing. You'd be held in contempt
...
Not confessing is evading. Silence means that you're not from God. So if we are witnesses of the person and work of Jesus Christ, and we're asked to testify as to the reason for the hope that is within us and we give a muted evasive non-clear answer, it's not satisfactory. It wouldn't be satisfactory in a human court. Now how much more is this required of a preacher? How much more when we get behind a pulpit? Is God satisfied if we entertain, if we have witty aphorisms about wisdom in life, we're able to make you happy, we're able to tell you how to have springs on your buggy so you have a smoother ride through life... that's not confessing and it fails this test.
Let's look at verse 5 now. This is very very telling. I think this verse here explains the whole seeker movement. “They are from the world therefore they speak as from the world. And the world listens to them.” Brothers and sisters if we speak the world’s language they’ll like us! They won’t persecute us. They want to hear, what does the world want to hear right now? Well we live in a mystical world so we’ll give them a mystic Christianity. We live in a relativistic world, we’ll give them a relativistic Christianity. We live in a postmodern world, we’ll give them a postmodern Christianity. We live in a world where they gave up on knowing the truth so we won’t give them any truth we’ll just give them a spiritual experience. We’ll just light some candles or we’ll just set the mood. Or we live in a world where people want to solve life’s problems, they want to live a better life, they don’t want to find out about heaven and hell and blood atonement and doctrine and all that stuff, so we won’t give them doctrine. We’ll give them practical life application. Brothers and sisters, that is the message that the world will listen to! Yes they will, and they will be your friend, and they’ll give you money and they’ll give you endorsements and they’ll ask you to speak at their conventions and you can be a big popular man in this world. But what does it say. They are from the world, therefore they speak as from the world. How dare us as Christians speak as from the world when we really don’t believe the world’s message? We are not allowed that option. I am not allowed to speak so that you think somehow what I have is the world’s wisdom. It has to be God’s wisdom from the Bible.
Notice the rest of this verse: “We are from God, he who knows God listens to us. He who is not from God does not listen to us. “ We don’t have any neutral middle ground here. And so therefore we have the decision to make. A very clear decision. Who do we want to appeal to. What audience are we looking for. If we’re preaching the gospel forthrightly and clearly, we realize right up front that it guarantees a much smaller audience. Narrow is the gate and narrow is the path that leads to eternal life. Absolutely. It’s guaranteed you’ll have less of an audience. The world has a lot of people. Billions of them. And there is a wide path with multitudes on it and if we want them to listen to us, we’re getting ourselves in trouble because now we’ve got to change our message. This isn’t just a matter of how clever you can be or how winsome you can be or how compelling you can be, it’s a matter of the actual content of the message and that’s an either or. Either the gospel, confess clearly OR some mixture that the world won’t even notice is NOT the gospel OR (is) the gospel, they don’t care, it sounds good to them.
I’m making the claim that what we’re being sold in modern evangelicalism is an ungodly mixture that appeals to the world. And we need to start preaching what the people who know God will listen to.
And you might say well if we’re gonna do that then we’re not concerned about reaching the lost! And I would say ABSOLUTELY NOT. That is the biggest lie you could ever hear. If we are really concerned about reaching the lost, we will preach the gospel, the only means God uses to SAVE the lost. And um, you can have a huge audience of worldly people and most of them are going to get mad at you, but God will save SOME. And those are the ones he was going to save. And they will come. And they will listen to us.
And so we have to determine right here and now what is the message of the church, what are we going to invest our money in, what are we going to invest our time in, what are we passionate about, and what are we going to proclaim, and be willing right here and now to say Lord, if that means a small audience, only that little flock that knows God, so be it! Thank God, that’s who I want to be with.
Notice he says he who is not from God does not listen to us. They’ll either be converted or they’ll get mad and they’ll leave. When we go out on the streets we preach the message the gospel. They’re either converted or they eat their hamburger and go home. But they hear the gospel. “By this we know” - notice this is not difficult, that’s what just boggles my mind. Honestly I can’t understand what’s going on in the church world today. Because this discernment isn’t hard, but there’s such a lack of it. Look at how easy it is. By this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error. This is our objective discernment tool. It’s the best tool you’ll ever have...
This is your godly discernment tool and it will keep you out of trouble. Is this the gospel? Is it coming from the spirit of God, is it proclaimed forthrightly? Remember Peter at one point wasn’t straightforward about the truth of the gospel. Are we straightforward about the truth of the gospel, and is the message that we’re hearing designed to appeal to those who know God or is our message designed to appeal to those in the world? Ask those questions and you’ve got your discernment. And you know what the very very scary sobering answer is? Most of the evangelical church is in error right now because of massive apostasy. I couldn’t believe it if I didn’t see it happen.
Bob does finish the message with the glorious good news that we all fail in this matter in many ways, because of our fear of man. But he offers forgiveness through Christ's shed blood on the cross.
Now, compare that to this:
The Christian Bubble Part 2 from
CrossPoint Church on
Vimeo.
I pray Dan will confess his fear of man and stop looking to the world for guidance on how he should be publicly preaching and teaching.
