The Teachers of Error: Their Description

Sermon Transcript

Four or five years ago, I was watching television. Yes, pastors watch tv. I don’t normally do this but they had one of those really crazy ads to buy something, and if you buy it right now for $29.99, that you’ll get an extra one free; and for the next 30 minutes you could get this, and you should buy it. Well, it was this thing called Hydroseed. Let me tell you right now, don’t buy it. I had a spot in my backyard that I could not get to grow, and I saw this advertisement. They sprayed it on a block wall—have you ever seen this?—they sprayed it on a block wall, it sticks, and the grass grows sideways off the wall. I thought, Man, if it can do that, it surely will grow in my backyard. This is great.

I got duped. I believed the lie, and I bought this thing. I put it on my hose, like you’re supposed to, turned the water on, and BOOM! it blew up. Have you ever seen a pastor covered with Hydroseed? Green pastor. I thought I was going to be green for the next six months. Needless to say, I felt violated. I felt ripped off. I felt lied to. Now, it’s one thing when you’re lied about Hydroseed, it’s another thing when you’re lied about the Word of God and your eternal soul and eternal destiny.

Peter, in this section that we’re covering tonight, is going to warn us about false teachers. He mentions false prophets and false teachers. Look at 2 Peter 2:1-3. He says, “But there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you, who privily”—privately, secretly, or under the guise of being true teachers—“shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction.” And, sadly, look at verse 2, “And many shall follow their pernicious ways;”—the word ‘pernicious’ means immoral ways—“by reason of whom the way of truth shall be evil spoken of. 3 And through covetousness shall they with feigned”—or plastic, phony—“words make merchandise of you: whose judgment now of a long time lingereth not, and their damnation slumbereth not.”

The best defense against false teachers is what we saw in 2 Peter 1, that we have a real faith in Jesus Christ and that we are trusting the Jesus of the Scriptures, not the Jesus of a cult leader or some false religious system. And, secondly, that we have a growing faith—our faith is real, and it’s growing, it’s bearing fruit. We’re adding to our faith virtue and knowledge. Thirdly, that we have a grounded faith. Last time together we saw that in 2 Peter 1 where we are given “ . . . a more sure word of prophecy; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto.” This is a subject that is very pertinent to our day because the Bible says in the last days, which I believe we’re living in right now, that many shall, listen to what it says, “ . . . depart from the faith,” not lose faith, but depart from the faith, the body of orthodox truth that we as Christians believe.

This is what’s known as apostasy. It means the falling away. In the last days, there will be many people who are professing to be believers, but they are not really truly believers. They’re not born again. They’re not growing. They’re not grounded in God’s Word. They’re “ . . . tares among the wheat.” They’re false professors. They’re the “ . . . leaven”—in the—“ . . . meal.” They’re “ . . . the birds . . . in the branches,” as the kingdom grows. So, we need to be grounded and growing in the Word of God.

Peter moves into this purpose for writing the letter, and he wanted believers to keep standing on the truth of God’s Word and not be deceived. The book is very similar to the book of Jude—that little epistle of Jude that’s just one short chapter where Jude says, “ . . . that ye should earnestly contend for the faith which was once”—and for all—“delivered unto the saints.”

Tonight in our text, Peter has two simple things: He gives us the description of the false teachers, and then we’re going to see next time we’re together he gives us a picture of their destruction. We’ll just kind of hint at that concept, but he gives a description and then gives their destruction.

Now, notice in verses 1-3 Peter describes these false teachers in four words—four words that describe the teachers’ error. If you’re taking notes, you can write them down. The first is “deception.” They come with deception. They don’t come and knock on the door and say, “Hi, we’re false teachers. We’re cults, and we came to damn your soul to hell. Do you want to have a Bible study with us?” They don’t do that. They say, “Yeah, we’re Christians. Yeah, we believe in Jesus.” They have the same vocabulary, but they have a different dictionary. They use the same words but give them different meanings or definitions, so we need to be careful about who we follow and what we listen to. They are deceptive. Look at verse 1. Peter says, “But there were”—I want you to note that that’s past tense—“false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be”—future tense—“false teachers among you.”

I gave you that past tense I pointed out because I believe that this is referring to the Old Testament, that they had prophets of God and they had false prophets that weren’t from God. In the Old Testament they had true prophets and they had false prophets. In the new dispensation of grace, or the Church Age or New Testament, we have true teachers and we have false teachers, so we must be discerning and realize not everyone who stands in a pulpit and opens the Bible or preaches or teaches the Word of God, is teaching the true Scriptures, the Word of God. They have false prophets in the Old Testament, and they also have “ . . . false teachers”—which shall be—“among you,” and as you go through the chapter after verse 3, we’re going to see that they were there at the present time Peter was writing. So, the Old Testament had false prophets, the New Testament has false teachers, and they were among them, they were in the church, so Peter is writing to them.

Why does Peter say false prophets, false teachers? I could be wrong, I don’t think I am wrong. I wouldn’t mention it if I didn’t believe it, but I think that today in the church we do not have the office of a prophet. Whenever anyone claims today in the church to be a prophet of God, and by that implying that they have a direct word from God, that they’re the mouthpiece of God…it’s interesting, the Mormons have a direct succession of prophets, and other cults have direct succession of prophets. There are no prophets today. People have come to me and said, “I’m Prophet Elijah,” or “I’m Prophet Ezekiel,” or “I’m Prophet Jeremiah,” and want to address our congregation. I tell them, “We’re a nonprofit corporation.” Anytime I say that, people say, “John, you don’t believe in prophecy?” I believe in prophecy, that you can be given that gift to speak the Word of the Lord, but it’s always going to be perfectly and totally consistent and in sync with the Scriptures, the Word of God.

Remember last week, “ . . . a more sure word of prophecy,” more sure than on Mount Transfiguration and what we saw, what we heard, what we experienced is the Word of God? And, it’s so important that we build not on subjective experience but on objective truth. So, be careful of those ministries or ministers that claim apostolic authority. I don’t believe that we have apostles in the primary sense anymore. We have the teachings of the apostles in the Scriptures, but we don’t have apostles who can write more Scriptures. We have a back cover on our Bibles—there’s no new revelation. Remember, if it’s new it’s not true; if it’s true, it’s not new? So, there’s a closing of this revelation.

What a preacher does today, he takes God’s Word and he expounds it or proclaims it or teaches it so that we’re hearing the Word of God. Notice it starts with “But” in verse 1, which means it’s hinging off the last verse of 2 Peter 1:21. Go back there. He says, “For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man,”—in other words, the prophets of the Old Testament weren’t just writing or speaking out of their own minds or their own heads—“but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy [Spirit].” Remember we looked at that. That word means that they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. This is what’s called the doctrine of inspiration, which means that God superintended the human authors so that the very words they wrote were the words of God. He made sure that they were writing His words.

Second Timothy 3:16 says, “All scripture is given by inspiration of God,”—that means that it is God-breathed. So, God carried them along, made sure what they wrote was the Word of God, the very words and all of them, and He breathed out on them the very word of God. They wrote the Scriptures as they were watched over by God, so when you read your Bible you have the Word of God. Someone said, “Well, I want to hear God speak to me audibly.” Then, read the Bible out loud and you’ll hear it audibly. This is why I read the Bible when I preach. This is why I keep coming back to the text when I preach because this is the Word of God. I’m not the authority, the Bible is the authority. The more closely I expound God’s Word accurately, and I rightly divide it, the more you’re hearing the voice of God and getting the message of God in truth from His Word.

Be careful about those ministries that claim to have prophets…and I’m just going to say it because I think it needs to be said. Bethel Ministries claims to have prophets from God, and their doctrine is askew. Bill Johnson is not a true, faithful Bible teacher. They’re teaching things that are not biblical, claiming biblical authority that they have, that they have apostles and they have prophets, so the authority shifts from the Bible to the individual. Be very careful, but whenever the authority shifts from the Bible to the individual, you’re on dangerous, dangerous territories. So, there were false prophets among the people, there are false teachers among you.

In 1 Kings 22, there’s a classic example of a false prophet in the Old Testament in the story of King Ahab and Jehoshaphat who were going to join together to go out and fight against the Syrian army. They wanted to get a word from the Lord, so King Ahab told Jehoshaphat, “I want to hear what the prophets have to say. Do you have any prophets?” And he said, “Okay, let’s call the prophets,” so he calls these false prophets in, and they say, “Do go to battle. You will succeed. You will be okay. Go and conquer in the name of the Lord.” But the king said, “No, something’s not right about that,” maybe the shoes they were wearing and the watch they had on and the way they looked. I don’t know, the suit they were wearing or the fact that they were taking six offerings in the service. He said, “We need to call some other prophet. Do you have another?” He said, “Well, we have this guy named Micaiah. This prophet named Micaiah is a real prophet, but I don’t like him because he never tells me anything that I want to hear.” He wasn’t worried about whether it’s true or not, it’s what I want to hear. So, he calls the prophet and kind of sarcastically says, “Go up and you shall prosper.” He said, “Come on, Micaiah, tell me the truth.” He said, “The truth is, if you go to battle, you’ll be wiped out.” He turns to the other king and says, “See, I told you. He never tells me anything good.”

That’s what a false prophet or teacher does, he tells you what you want to hear. His fidelity is not to the Scriptures, he’s actually trying to tickle your ears and tell you things that you want to hear, which is very, very dangerous. Jesus said, “There’ll be wolves among the sheep.” In Acts 20, Paul said, when he met with the elders of Ephesus, “That after I leave you and your churches, some will come in and devour the flock; and some will even arise from your very own midst.”

I want you to notice this quality of deception in verse 1. It says that they will secretly “ . . . bring in”—destructive, the King James has—“damnable heresies.” Literally, that means they will choose to tell a lie. They’re bringing in secretly, not overtly but secretly, they’ll “bring in damnable heresies.” So, they will camouflage the truth, they bring it in secretly. They shall be bringing in false doctrines, and it’s interesting that they bring it in ‘privily’ or privately, King James says, but it means that they will be under the guise of deception.

Write down 2 Corinthians 11:13-15 where Paul says, “For such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ. 14 And no marvel;”—or no big deal—“for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light. 15 Therefore it is no great thing if his ministers also be transformed as the ministers of righteousness; whose end shall be according to their works.” You have to be discerning, and your defense is the Bible, the B-I-B-L-E, the Word of God. You must know the truth, the truth will set you free. The only way to know a counterfeit is to study the real thing, any variation from that, you know it’s not the true Word of God. So, watch out for these false teachers.

The second word that describes them is not only “deception” but it is “denial.” Look at verse 1 again. It says there they “ . . . shall bring in”—destructive—“heresies, even”—and here it is—“denying the Lord that bought them.” What does Peter mean by “denying the Lord that bought them”? The fact that it says “bought them” confuses some people thinking, “Well, they’re born again,” or “They’re saved,” or “They’re redeemed.” No. It means Jesus died for them and for their sins, but they have not by faith appropriated that finished work of Christ for them on the cross and been born again.

I believe that these heretics that depart from the faith were never truly born again or never truly regenerated. In John’s epistle he said, “They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us”—and not gone out from us. The fact that, “They went out from us,” indicates that “they were not of us,” and that’s what’s happening in this situation. Don’t be confused by this “bought them,” it means that yes Jesus died for them on the cross, I don’t believe the Bible teaches limited atonement, I believe that Jesus died for the world, “For God so loved the world, that he gave is only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” You, as an individual, must receive by faith what Jesus did for you on the cross by trusting Him, believing in Him in order to be saved. But these actually bring in these “ . . . heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them.” So, they are false teachers who deny Jesus Christ. Their Christology, their doctrine of Christ, is wrong.

You’ve heard me say that it’s so important that we have the right doctrine about Jesus. If you’re wrong about Jesus, you’re wrong about God. You can’t be wrong about Jesus and right about God. If you get Jesus wrong, you’ve got God wrong because the only way to know God and to come to be saved is through Jesus Christ, so you better make sure that you have what the Bible teaches about Jesus Christ correct.

Now, these false teachers are known for what they deny. Let me give you some points here. Write them down. First, they deny the Bible alone is the inspired, inerrant, infallible Word of God. Remember two weeks ago, too, I talked about what’s called verbal plenary inspiration. “Verbal” means the words, and “plenary” means all of them. So, they say with their same vocabulary, “We believe the Bible’s the Word of God,” but what do they mean by that? They don’t believe in verbal plenary inspiration. They believe that the concepts or some of the Bible or some of the ideas or it’s inspired like natural inspiration, not divine inspiration, so they don’t hold to an orthodox view of Scripture. You’re always going to find that a false teacher has a subpar view of the Bible.

Whenever I’m checking a doctrinal statement for a ministry, I always want to look at their statement about what they believe about the Scriptures because what we believe about God comes out of the Bible. That’s what motivates expository preachers to preach the Bible—a high view of Scripture. There’s nothing more important than having a right view of Scripture and be rightly related to the Word of God.

False teachers are going to have a wrong view of Scriptures, and in that vein they will have other extra books to add to the Scriptures. You know, the Mormons are not Christians. Mormon teaching is not biblical Christianity. There may be a Mormon that’s saved, and pretty deceived in a Mormon church, but he’s not saved because of Mormonism, he’s saved in spite of it. Mormonism is not Christianity, and they don’t just have Bibles, they actually have books that are more important than the Bible. They have the “Book of Mormon.” They have the “Pearl of Great Price.” They have the “Doctrine and Covenants.” They don’t just read their Bible, they read these other extra books, so this is another problem that false teachers have, they push their books, material, or their literature or they have their holy books that replace the Word of God.

Such is the case with the Jehovah’s Witnesses, which again is not Christianity. It is a cult. It is a Christian cult. They have their Awake! Magazine, and they actually teach that if you read the Bible by itself, you will go into darkness, that you must get the interpretation of the Bible, “Through our literature,” and “Through our magazines,” and they have their own translation of the Bible, which is called “The New World Translation,” which is known not to be consistent with the Greek manuscripts of the New Testament or of the Old Testament Hebrew. Be careful about those groups that push their books and added writings. It’s so dangerous.

Remember in Genesis 3, one of the first things that Satan did when he tempted Adam and Eve in the Garden. He actually got them to doubt God’s Word, “Did God really say you cannot eat of all the trees of the garden? Did He say not to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil?” and threw doubt in their minds. Satan wants to get you to doubt God’s Word and its veracity and its clarity and its authority. There’s all kinds of groups that place the authority not just in the Bible alone.

Since I’m dealing with this very difficult subject, and this is not popular. This is kind of a very unpopular subject to teach on because we’ve adopted in the church today this idea that there are no absolute truth and tolerance is accepting everyone’s view as equally valid. But in Roman Catholicism the authority is not just the Bible, it is tradition. It is Papal authority. It’s the church’s authority, and they believe—and here’s the problem—that the church is what produced the Bible, that the Bible is the product of the church, therefore the authority lies in the church not solely in the Scriptures. It was through the Protestant Reformation that we came up with what’s called sola scriptura or Scriptures alone. That doesn’t mean that we can’t look at tradition and church history, but that’s not the authority. The authority is the Word of God. The authority is not a Pope, it’s not a priest, it’s not a man, it’s not an organization, it is the Bible, the Word of God. If you can’t find it in Scriptures, then it needs to be rejected as not being biblical doctrine or biblical Christianity. They have a false view of the Bible in their denial of the Word of God.

Then, they deny the doctrine of the Trinity. Of course, Roman Catholicism has a biblical view of the Trinity and of the deity of Christ and of Christ’s nature. They have a false view of salvation or justification. They don’t believe that we are saved by grace alone through faith alone. They believe we’re saved by grace through faith, plus works. They add works to salvation, which is not what’s taught in the Bible. But we find that many cults and false teachers deny the Trinity.

What do we mean by the Trinity? We mean that there’s one God, but He’s manifested in three Persons. If a person denies the Trinity, they are denying biblical Christianity. It is not Christianity. One God, three Persons—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Thirdly, they deny the deity of Jesus Christ. Notice in our text they deny “ . . . the Lord that bought them,” so they deny His full deity and His real, authentic humanity.

Fourthly, they also deny the substitutionary death of Jesus Christ. This is amazing to me that we’re actually seeing in what was once many evangelical, Bible-believing churches questioning the doctrine of penal substitutionary atonement of the Cross. It’s known as kind of a new perspective on Paul. A man by the name of N.T. Wright, who’s a quite popular Anglican preacher from England is preaching that God didn’t send His Son to die on the cross to pay for our sins and that justification isn’t a legal concept where God declares us righteous but that we work to be saved and we have to live it out and in the end we’ll find out whether or not we were justified. They actually deny penal substitutionary atoning death of Jesus Christ on the cross. Jesus, when He was on the cross, said, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” And, He was forsaken of God the Father because He became the substitute for man the creature’s sin. He took our sin. The wrath of God the Father was actually poured out on His own Son for the sins of the world. I know that’s hard to comprehend, but that’s what the Bible teaches. But these false teachers deny that about Christ.

They deny His bodily resurrection. They don’t believe that He physically, bodily, rose from the dead. They say Jesus rose, they preach their Easter sermons, but they don’t believe in a physical, literal resurrection to a glorified body of Jesus Christ. They also deny salvation by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. They’ll say, “Well, the Bible doesn’t say, ‘Alone,’” but it teaches that. It teaches that just believing in Jesus by faith brings salvation.

Remember the Philippian jailer in Acts 16, “ . . . what must I do to be saved?” Isn’t that a great question? “ . . . what must I do to be saved?” Get a haircut. Sit in a lotus, contemplate my navel. Get baptized. Join the church. Walk on my knees over broken glass. Pray certain prayers. Work real hard. No. Paul the apostle said, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.” There you have it. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved.

How bout John 3:16? “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him”—there you have it—“should not perish, but have everlasting life.” That’s the Bible in one verse. That’s salvation. That’s believing in Jesus means to trust Him to save you, believing He died for your sins. Trusting Him to forgive your sins and believing in Him and then you’re saved, Ephesians 2:8-9. This is why we preach the Word, nothing more, nothing less, 2 Timothy 4, preach or proclaim. The word is kērýssō to herald the Word of God.

Let me give you the third quality describing these false teachers, and this is pretty heavy, verse 2, “sensuality.” Notice verse 2. It says, “And many shall follow their”—and here’s the word—“pernicious ways.” Sad. Many follow their pernicious ways. The word “pernicious” in my King James Bible means immoral ways. It’s talking about sexual immorality, “ . . . by reason of whom the way of truth shall be evil spoken of.” It’s sexual license. It’s reckless and hardened immorality. The plural form denotes repeated acts of sensual excess. Now, in many cases, when someone’s doctrine is wrong, their behavior is wrong, and it’s very common that sexual immorality accompanies false teachers because they don’t have a high view of Scripture or the holiness of God. They haven’t been regenerated, and they degenerate into sexual immorality.

William Barclay in his commentary said it describes the attitude of a man who is lost to shame, is past the stage of wishing to conceal his sin, and of being ashamed of it. And, Jude 1:4 actually says, “ . . . turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness.” They turn God’s grace into lasciviousness. Many cults have become places of sexual immorality, and it’s sad and tragic. Churches today celebrate sexual immorality. We have so-called churches with gay flags, LGBTQ flags, in front of the church and they celebrate sexual immorality. Does God love everyone? Yes, God loves everyone. Does God want to save everyone? Yes, He wants to save everyone. But God is holy. One of the chief attributes of God revealed in the Bible is His holiness. So, because God is holy and righteous, He will judge sin.

I think of Joseph Smith who was a polygamist, and many Mormons that believe in polygamy. The Children Of God, founded by Moses David Berg in the 60s and early 70s, was a cult following their leader into gross immorality. So, “And many shall follow their pernicious”—sinful—“ways.” It’s popular. Many go down that road. Verse 2, “ . . . the way of truth shall be evil spoken of.” So, watch out.

Here’s the fourth, it’s “greed,” verse 3. In verse 2, sexual immorality is marking them, and verse 3, covetousness is marking them. He says, “And through covetousness shall they with feigned words make merchandise of you: whose judgment now of a long time lingereth not, and their damnation slumbereth not,” the judgment of God. That’s what introduces them from verses 4-9 where he talks about God’s judgment in the Old Testament upon false prophets and false teachers, is not going to linger or slumber, they’re not going to sleep. God’s going to awaken and judge them for their false teachers.

The false teachers, it’s all about money, money, money, money, money, money, money—show me the money. When a preacher talks more about money than Jesus, run for your life. When a ministry focuses more on money than Jesus, run for your life. When they twist the Scriptures to their gain and the fact that they say, “Well, God wants us rich. God wants you rich,” and “If you want to be blessed, if you want to really be blessed, then you’ve gotta give to my ministry and God will give you a hundredfold return.” I heard one preacher that had the miracle wallet that he’ll send you, “If you give $100 to my ministry, I’ll send you this miracle wallet that will always have money in it.” Why does he need my hundred bucks if he has a miracle wallet? You should get those suckers producing some money. All the scams and the gimmicks—prayer cloths, piece of wood of the cross, $39.95, “You can buy it right now, and if you touch it, you’ll be healed,” holy water from Jerusalem. They got it probably out of their sinks in LA somewhere.

Remember when Jesus overturned the money changers’ tables? “You’ve turned My Father’s house into a den of thieves. It should be a house of prayer.” How sad. They tickle their ears. They talk about money.

In 1 Timothy 6:5-6, write it down, there’s a whole bunch of information there about false teachers, and it says they say that godliness is a way to get rich. Godliness is a way to get rich. There are numerous false teachers on television right now who teach what is commonly called a Word Faith, positive confession, health wealth prosperity gospel. It is not biblical. It is not scriptural. Nowhere does God promise or guarantee that we will be wealthy or rich. He promises to take care of our needs, not our greeds. He says, “ . . . as thy days, so shall thy strength be.” But I totally reject the false teaching of those who teach Word Faith doctrine that if you just speak out, you’ll prosper; just speak by faith, you’ll be healed. It’s not in the Bible. They’re preaching something that is not true, and we need to be warned about it, be on the lookout. The prosperity doctrine is all about money.

In 1 Peter 5 Peter talks about pastors, that they shepherd “ . . . the flock of God . . . taking the oversight thereof, not by constraint, but willingly; not for filthy lucre”—sake—“but of a ready mind.” Never, ever should a pastor be motivated by money or the desire for gain. He should be preaching Christ and let Christ take care of his needs.

Notice, verse 3, they use “feigned words” and “make merchandise of you.” The word “feigned” is the word plastós in the Greek. We get our word plastics from it. I think that’s fascinating—plastics, phony plastic words. In 2 Timothy 4, they don’t preach the Word, they tickle the ears of those who want to hear what they want to hear. Instead of saying, “Preach it,” they say, “Tickle it,” and they want words of comfort. They want a positive, joyous message.

Verse 3, and this is our wrap-up, “ . . . whose judgment now”—is coming. The New Living Translation renders verse 3, “But God condemned them long ago, and their destruction will not be delayed.” Now, I just want you to peek at it, verse 4, “For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell,”—which is the word tartaróō. Verse 5, “And spared not the old world, but saved Noah the eighth person, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood upon the world of the ungodly.” So, God’s judgment came on the angels that sinned, God’s judgment will come on these false teachers. God’s judgment came on the world of Noah, and, verse 5, God’s judgment will come on them.

A third example from the Old Testament, verse 6, “And turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrha into ashes condemned them with an overthrow, making them an ensample unto those that after should live ungodly.” So, you have the story of angels being judged, you have the story of the people in Noah’s day being judged, you have the story of Sodom and Gomorrha being destroyed, God just saving Lot, but notice verse 9, he said, “The Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly out of temptations, and to reserve the unjust unto the day of judgment to be punished.” A blessed verse, the righteous will be preserved and protected. Why? Because Christ’s death on the cross and His righteousness imputed to us, we stand in Him forgiven and free. He took my judgment. He took my wrath. He took my punishment. These false teachers will be judged, but we as believers will pass from death to life. We won’t stand before the judgment bar of God.

The cross of Jesus Christ is our salvation. That’s why Paul says, “If I am going to glory, I will glory in the cross,” not in my goodness, not in my works, not in my righteousness. “But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Amen? As we pray and we partake, let’s give thanks to the Lord for His Word, the truth of His Word. Jesus said, “And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free,” and that in the cross of Jesus Christ, we’ve been forgiven.

Sermon Notes