Wait Am I a FALSE TEACHER

Okay, if you have your Bible, and I hope you do, let's turn to the book of Jude. We're back in the
book of Jude. We're going to look at a passage that we looked at briefly two weeks ago,
verses 14 through 16. Again, let me set the context.
Jude is writing to his readers in about 70 AD, warning them about the emergence of false teachers
who have appeared in the church. They have crept in unaware, he says, and they are undermining the
gospel. They are undermining the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.
In fact, what Jude wants for his readers, he wants them to be able to recognize the false teachers
and their false teaching. He wants us to understand what they look like and what's motivating them.
And then he wants to warn them and warn us not to be seduced by what these false teachers are
advocating. He says they are destined for destruction, and those who follow them will wind up
headed in the same direction. So here's what he's told us already as we've looked through this
about the false teachers. Here are the characteristics of the false teachers. They deny the
lordship of Christ. They reject the teaching of the apostles. They challenge the promises of God
and don't believe God's promises. They don't respond in faith to the promises of God. They turn the
grace of God into license. Because God is gracious, they think they can go ahead and sin with
impunity. They promote and indulge in sexual sin, sensuality.
They refuse to submit to God and to God-ordained authority. They are blasphemers.
They are self-absorbed. and they are ungodly. That's the kind of catch-all phrase he uses in
verse 15 to talk about them. They are ungodly. So this morning,
what we're going to see is additional characteristics of these false teachers, and all of these
additional characteristics are connected to their speech, the way these false teachers speak.
And as you'll see, the four characteristics that we're going to be talking about this morning are
going to hit close to home. In fact, as I read this, I thought to myself,
wait, am I a false teacher? Because these are things that I can identify with. If you don't get
your toes stepped on this morning, you're just not paying attention. So a lot to cover. Let's dig
into the text and see what God has for us. Let me pray for our time in his word. Lord, we ask for
the gift of illumination this morning. We ask that your spirit would be our teacher. We come to you
with hearts that are expectant. We want to hear from you. We need to hear from you.
But Lord, we don't just want to be hearers of your word. We want to be obedient. We want to be
doers. We want to be challenged by your word. We want to be conformed into the image of Christ.
So use your word in the hand of your spirit today to accomplish that, we pray in your name.
Let me read the passage we're going to be looking at. You can follow along as I read. This is the
word of God for the people of God. The Bible says about the false teachers, it was also about these
that Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied, saying, Behold, the Lord comes with 10,000 of his
holy ones to execute judgment on all and to convict all the ungodly of all their deeds of
ungodliness that they have committed in such an ungodly way. and of all the harsh things that
ungodly sinners have spoken against them. These are grumblers, malcontents,
following their own sinful desires. They are loudmouth boasters,
showing favoritism to gain advantage. Amen.
May God bless this reading of his word. The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of God
will last forever. Now it's that last verse we read. Verse 16 that we're going to focus on this
morning. Jude says false teachers are grumblers, malcontents,
boasters, and manipulative flatterers. Those are the four characteristics.
Now, again, I read that list and I thought,
I've been that, done that, been there, right? Because I can give you a whole bunch of personal
illustrations for how I have indulged in these characteristics. Grumbler, yes, I've been a
grumbler. Malcontent, I sure can be.
Boaster, no, I'm not one of those. See what I did there?
Flatterer, if it serves my purposes, I've been known to lay it on thick. Sure, I've done all of
those things. So before we look at these characteristics individually, let me just give you some
general observations about this verse. First of all,
Jude is expanding in verse 16 on what it means that these false teachers are ungodly.
He's taking the word ungodly and unpacking it. These are characteristics of ungodliness.
You can't do this and be godly simultaneously. There are no godly grumblers.
Malkontentedness is not a fruit of the spirit. So he's explaining to us that this goes along with
ungodliness. And then he says, and the false teachers we're talking about are known by this
behavior. They are not occasional with these things. They are characteristic of them. You can see
it in them. This is not a once in a while occurrence for them. It is dominant in how they act.
And they follow these characteristics unashamedly and unrepentantly.
They're not put off by this. When they grumble or they're malcontent, they're not thinking,
oh, that's wrong. That's sinful. That's dishonoring to God. No, they embrace their grumbling and
their malcontentedness and their boasting and their flattery. They don't see them as sinful.
And so we should recognize there is a difference between someone who grumbles from time to time and
recognizes it as a sin and somebody who's known as a grumbler and does it with impunity. I'm
guessing that everyone here has grumbled once or twice today or this week.
I mean, we do this. We're grumblers. But we should recognize that it's sinful to be a grumbler.
We should be convicted and we should turn from that and want to put off that behavior. The false
teachers don't do that. It is characteristic for them. They would be known by these things.
To the extent that I know all of you, I don't characterize any of you as perpetual grumblers.
But that brings us to the fourth general observation. We have a tendency to minimize these kinds of
things, grumbling, malcontentedness, flattery, boasting. We think, well, those are little sins.
I mean, it's not adultery. It's not murder. It's not on the Ten Commandment list. So these are not
big sins. That's how we tend to think of them. These are what author Jerry Bridge has referred to
as respectable sins. And we tend to excuse them and indulge ourselves in them.
We don't see them as a big deal. That is not how God sees them. God sees them as a big deal.
Remember what happened, in fact, Jude has already alluded to this, when the children of Israel
grumbled against God, when they murmured, when they were discontented,
God brought judgment, severe punishment. They wandered in the wilderness for 40 years because of
that. God did not look at that and say, that's just a small thing. Rumbling and malcontentedness
and boasting and flattery, these are bigger deals than most of us recognize. And while the context,
here's the last thing, while the context of Jude 16 is about how to recognize a false teacher, The
larger theme of ungodliness and what that looks like is something all of us have to grapple with.
And you may not be a false teacher, but to the extent that any of these characteristics are true
about you, it's an indication you are ignoring or excusing ungodliness in your own life.
You're listening to the wrong voices. You're following false teaching,
whether that's coming from the world, the flesh, the devil, wherever it's coming from. To the
extent that you're a malcontented grumbler who boasts and flatters,
you're induced in that by your own fleshly impulses, or because you're listening to the false
messages that are coming maybe from inside the church or maybe from outside in the world. So with
that background, I want to look at each of these four characteristics individually and see what is
true about the false teachers, but what can also be true about their followers. The first one is
grumbling. They are grumblers. They are murmurers, complainers.
Murmur is kind of an onomatopoeic word, right? It's like murmur, murmur, murmur, murmur,
right? It sounds like what it is. And I don't think I need to define grumbling to you,
but just to be clear, I googled it. Here's what you'll get if you google it. To grumble is to
complain about something in a bad-tempered way. Synonyms include complain,
moan, groan, whine, mutter, grouse, bleat, and carp. That's a pretty good list.
Of course, the example that most often comes to mind when we think of grumbling is the one that we
talked about, the children of Israel grumbling in the wilderness. God has just delivered them from
bondage and slavery to the Egyptians who were dealing with them harshly. At the climax of that
deliverance, they look and they go, we used to have onions when we were in Egypt. They're grumbling
in the wilderness after God has just given them deliverance. God has delivered us from our sin,
and we grumble because we don't have what we want.
Marianne will tell you that I am most provoked to grumbling when I am driving on the highway.
Slow drivers in the left lane. Bring it out of me. I talk to them.
I tell them what I think of them. I'm thinking what is wrong with these people.
How did they get a driver's license? How are they paying attention? Why are they on my highway in
the first place?
Okay, here's another thing. Another thing that I grumble about. This is good for me. It's
cathartic, okay? I grumble when I'm in line at the grocery store and the person in front of me at
the checkout. waits until the cashier says that'll be $75.89 to even reach for their credit card.
Didn't they know that they were going to need a credit card right there? Why are they waiting for
the total to start going through their purse? Can we be a little more efficient here?
Anybody relate to some of these things that provoke grumbling in you? I mean, all of us are prone
to this. And Paul David Tripp is helpful here. He explains about grumbling. He says,
grumbling says, I deserve better. When we grumble,
we insert ourselves into the center of our universe and make life all about us.
When we don't get what we want immediately when we want it and precisely how we want it,
we grumble. It's the audible representation of a heart captured by the claustrophobic kingdom of
self.
That's what's going on with me when I'm on the highway or in the grocery store line. If I'm
inconvenienced, others are getting in my way, not conforming to my standards, I am prone to
grumble. Now we need to align our thinking about grumbling with what the Bible tells us about
grumbling. So Philippians 2.14 says, do everything without grumbling or disputing.
By the way, I checked. The Greek word there for everything means everything.
It doesn't give you, you know, you're excused and you can grumble if it gets really bad.
No, do everything. This is a verse that we taught our kids to memorize when they were growing up
because kids are prone to grumbling and disputing and arguing and bickering and carping,
all of those things. But it's not just kids, is it? We're to do everything without grumbling or
disputing. James 5, 9, do not grumble against one another, brothers,
so that you may not be judged. Huh. The judge is standing at the door.
James is saying it's a sin worthy of divine judgment to grumble.
Here's what we need to understand. With each of these sins, in fact, with any sin we commit, there
is a heart attitude that is being manifested through a behavior. So with each of these,
we're going to look at what is the behavior, what's the heart attitude, and what's the remedy? Or
what do we replace? What are we putting off here, the behavior, and what are we putting on?
But we need to understand we've got to address the heart issue. We can't just address the
behavioral issue. So in the case of grumbling, grumbling is a sin because what we're saying is,
I deserve better than this. I am entitled to better than this.
Where did you get that idea? Where did you get the idea that you're entitled to better than what's
happening to you today? Let me ask you a question. Did Jesus deserve better than what he got?
Did Jesus ever grumble?
Marianne and I were talking about this as we were driving back from Texas this past weekend,
and I said, do you think Jesus ever grumbled? And she was like, it's just hard to imagine that
somebody would go through life and never grumble once. But he never grumbled.
He never complained about his circumstances. He never murmured or carped.
Marianne also said, I think I'm going to skip church on Sunday. I don't want to hear this sermon.
She's here, though, so we'll give her that. Now, some of you may be thinking, wait a second,
what about the Psalms? You read the Psalms, and doesn't it sound like the psalmist is grumbling on
occasion? Don't you hear that? Is there a difference between lamenting in the book of Psalms and
grumbling, which is sinful? I think there is. I think that God calls us to appropriate holy
lamenting while never grumbling. John Bloom is helpful for me here.
He says, faithful complaining is an honest, groaning expression of what it's like to experience the
trouble, anguish, and grief of living in a fallen, futile world. God doesn't mind this kind of
complaining. In fact, he encourages it and teaches us how to do it in the Bible. There's an
appropriate way when we're dealing with living in a fallen world and the challenges of that to take
that to God and to pour out our lament to him for the brokenness of this world. That's different
than grumbling. In fact, here's how the Psalms teach us. to lament. Here's just one example.
Psalm 142. With my voice, I cry out to the Lord. With my voice,
I plead for mercy to the Lord. I pour out my complaint before him. I tell my trouble before him.
I'm thinking the next time I'm in the grocery line, I may just cry out to God when that lady's not
getting her purse out, you know, oh Lord, would you, no, I won't do that really.
When I'm grumbling in the grocery store or on the highway, I am not dealing with trouble,
anguish, or grief for living in a fallen world. I'm just finding myself inconvenienced and I'm
unhappy about it. There's the difference. What's going on in the heart? It's not God's glory is
diminished and God's ways are not being followed. It's I'm being inconvenienced.
The antidote to grumbling, the way we fix grumbling in our own hearts, you know what it is,
right? It's what we're going to celebrate this week. It's gratitude. The way you address grumbling
is through gratitude. That's what this coming Thursday is all about, but let me just suggest that
giving thanks ought not be a once-a-year activity for you. Giving thanks should be a posture.
It should be a practice. It is how you defeat your proneness to grumbling.
Look at these verses. 1 Thessalonians 5, 16 through 18. Rejoice always,
pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus
for you. I didn't make a slide for that one. You've heard those verses, right? Rejoice always,
pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances, for this is the will of God.
You want to know God's will? God's will, rejoice, always pray without ceasing, give thanks in all
circumstances. By the way, give thanks in all circumstances, not for all circumstances. God's not
calling us to give thanks when evil is done. We don't say, thank you,
God, for the Hamas attacks in Israel. But we give thanks in the midst of those circumstances for
God's presence, for his work, for the fact that he's in control and can be trusted even when our
circumstances are dire. We are refocusing our heart this way. We are looking at what we have to be
thankful for in the middle of the light and momentary afflictions that we're going through.
And that's what they are, according to the Bible. You say they don't feel light and momentary, and
I don't want to minimize suffering in your life. But I want you to rightly think about what the
Bible says about our trials and afflictions. It says God is at work doing good things.
And compared to the glory that is ahead for you, these are light and momentary afflictions. And it
requires intentionality on your part. In order to defeat grumbling and to practice gratitude,
you have to train yourself to do this. You have to practice it. You have to choose to be grateful.
You don't wait until you just feel grateful. You decide to be grateful instead of just reacting to
your circumstances. But it has to start with this acknowledgement. You have to start by
acknowledging that when you are grumbling, you are dishonoring God. It's a sin to grumble.
When you are grumbling, here's what you're saying. You're saying, God, your goodness and mercy and
kindness and love for me are insufficient for my happiness.
It's not enough to bring me the joy and peace I long for. You are not enough for me.
My redemption is not enough for me. The promise of eternity with you is not enough for me.
I need other things to make me happy and satisfied. Anybody want to say that to God?
That's what you're doing when you're grumbling.
Some of you know the story of Ann Voskamp. This is a picture of Ann. She, more than a decade ago,
wrote a book called A Thousand Gifts, where she talked about Her sister's recent death and other
trials and sorrows and disappointments that she was going through that were causing her to lose
heart and to lose her joy and in the process to drift away from her relationship with God.
Anybody been there where sorrow and disappointments have caused you to just back off from God and
not want to draw near to him? Well, Ann had a friend who challenged her to start a thankfulness.
journal. And this book, A Thousand Gifts, is the book that she wrote where she just started writing
down things that she was recognizing in her life that she could be thankful for. Not necessarily
big things. In fact, the first three on her list, morning shadows across old floors.
Now, I got to tell you that that wouldn't jump out. I wouldn't see a morning shadow and go, boy, I
can be thankful for it. But you know what? The sun rose. That's why there's a morning shadow.
Jam piled high on toast. Cry of a blue jay from high in the spruce.
Those are numbers one, two, and three on her list. She just started when something would spark joy
in her, when something she would look at and say, I have that to be thankful for. She was
retraining her thinking to be observant for and grateful for the blessings of life.
And as her list grew to a thousand, Along the way, she began to think and speak the language of
gratitude. Her life was transformed. Her joy came back as she discovered how much she has to be
thankful for. Anybody here need to start one of those journals? Start noticing and keeping a list
of the common blessings that we often take for granted? If you're a grumbler,
you ought to memorize. 1 Thessalonians 5.18. In everything give thanks, for this is the will of
God for you in Christ Jesus. You notice I have that memorized. You may need to memorize that as
well. It's hard when you're driving in the left lane behind an 18-wheeler, but I'm going to do it
and just see if that helps.
Jude 16 also says these false teachers, in addition to being grumblers, they are malcontented. They
are not just occasional grumblers. They are perpetually Discontented. Back to Google here.
The dictionary says a malcontent is someone who is dissatisfied and rebellious.
Synonyms include troublemaker, mischief maker, agitator, dissenter, excuse me,
how do you say that word? Dissentient. They are dissenters. Dissident and rebels.
So a malcontented person is somebody who goes beyond grumbling. They stir up strife. They spread
the infection. They're troublemakers. And when you dig below the surface with a malcontented
person, what you find is that the malcontented person is saying, God is not good.
When you are malcontented, you are saying, I don't believe God is good.
Maybe most of us are not going to say that out loud. We know. that would get us in trouble.
But in those seasons of discontentedness or malcontentedness, What we are saying is the goodness of
God is insufficient. I don't believe God is good in my moment here. That's why my heart is not at
rest within me. When you're in a prolonged season of discontentedness or malcontentedness,
what your heart is believing is that God is not good. Now let me be clear.
I think there's a difference between, I've been using discontented and malcontented as a synonym. I
think there's a little bit of a difference. There's such a thing as holy discontentedness. It is
right for us to be discontented with injustice in our world. If you're not discontented with that,
something's wrong. To be complacent or passive about sin in yourself or sin in the world is wrong.
We should be discontented. with the state of the world and discontented with the state of our own
soul so that we are actively at work trying to grow in godliness and spread the gospel.
In fact, I would suggest when Jesus taught the disciples to pray, he said, let's start with this,
thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. That's a statement that the way
things are now is not the way they ought to be. So start your prayer by saying,
Lord, I am wholly discontented. with how things are in my life and in our world. I want your
kingdom to come, your will to be done in my life and in the world. But most of the time,
when we are malcontented, it's not because things are out of sorts in the world.
It's because we don't like our lot in life. We don't like what God has chosen for us.
And God wants us to replace our malcontentedness with, guess what?
Contentedness. Contentment.
is a godly virtue. The Apostle Paul understood this. When he was being held in the Mamertine prison
in Rome, which was basically a hole in the ground with a grate over the top of it. That was his
cell. They dug a hole, put him in. There's a grate over the top. There's no indoor plumbing. He's
just in there, chained to a guard. While he's in there, he writes to the Philippians, and here's
what he says. I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. Stop,
write. There.
I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content.
Have you learned that?
I know how to be brought low and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance,
I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need.
I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. verse we see on t-shirts related to
athletic competition. No, the context of this verse is in the midst of, notice,
in the midst of either abundance or lack, in the midst of prosperity or adversity,
I know how to be content because my contentedness is not based on my level of prosperity or my
level of adversity. My contentedness is based on Christ in me, the hope of glory,
and I can be contented in all things because Christ is the one who strengthens me to be contented.
There's a classic book on the subject of contentedness written by a Puritan pastor named Jeremiah
Burroughs. It's called The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment.
And sad it is that it's a rare jewel. It ought to be It ought to be normal for us to know the
secret of contentedness. Here's what Burroughs writes. He says, Christian contentment is that
sweet, inward, quiet, gracious frame of spirit freely submitting to and taking delight in God's
wise and fatherly disposal in every condition. That's a good definition.
He says, to be well skilled in the mystery of Christian contentment is the duty,
glory, and excellence of the Christian. If you would get a contented life,
he says, do not grasp too much of the world.
We could stop right there and just meditate on that for a while. How much of your discontentedness
is because you are too in love with the world? and what the world offers. You're discontented,
you're malcontent, because you're not getting what everybody else has, what looks good in the
world. He says, one drop of the sweetness of heaven is enough to take away all the sourness and
bitterness of all the afflictions in the world. Have you learned the Apostle Paul's secret of being
content? Can you do all things through Christ who strengthens you? You can, but what it means is in
the middle of the malcontentedness you're experiencing, you have to turn your eyes upon Jesus. You
have to turn your heart back to him. You have to remember that your contentment is found in him,
not in your circumstances. Can you embrace trials when they come as something that God has brought
for your good? Or, Are you a grumbler? Are you perpetually dissatisfied and a troublemaker?
If you're not sure, ask a friend. Ask your spouse. They will tell you. False teachers are both
grumblers and malcontent, Jude says. They are also boasters.
A boaster is somebody who roots his or her identity in the opinion of others.
Let me explain that. What others think about them is so important to them that they will be their
own PR agent to try to get you to think better of them because the only way they can feel good
about themselves is if they have your respect, your admiration. They only feel valuable or only
think they have worth if other people value them or make them feel special.
A boaster is essentially, watch this, a glory thief.
A boaster is looking for the glory that belongs to God and wants it for themselves. God alone
should get glory, but I'd just like a little of it to splash over on me. That's what a boaster has
as his or her motive. They're trying to get glory for themselves.
Psalm 115 begins this way, not to us, O Lord, not to us.
us, but to your name, give glory. A boaster says,
how about just a little for me? Or a little more?
It's in all of us, right? We all want to be liked and admired and respected, thought of highly.
We all want to be seen as smart or good-looking or successful or accomplished in what's going on.
Back in the summer when we were talking about envy one Sunday, and I talked about the fact that I
thought Instagram should be renamed. You remember this? I said it should be Envygram because you're
watching it and it provokes envy. Well, on the other side of it, you're looking at other people's
stuff and envying them. I've renamed it now. It's Boastagram because that's what people are
posting. Their boasts, look at this.
Instagram and other social media is often full of what's called a humblebrag. You've heard of the
humblebrag? A humblebrag, you can look this up in the dictionary. A humblebrag is when you say
something that sounds like you're trying to be humble, you know, so honored that this happened to
me, but you're really just wanting everybody to know what happened to you. The so honored is just
there so it doesn't sound like you're boasting. I found some examples, some hilarious examples of
this. Okay, so here's the first one. Can't we start a media campaign to question how I got into
Columbia too? Still scratching my head at how I got accepted, and I demand answers.
And this person's trying to sound like, I can't believe I got accepted into Columbia, but what
they're saying is, look at me. I got into Columbia. It's a humble brag. I love this next one.
Look at this one. So this guy says, genuinely forgot how much I love this photo of my niece.
Isn't that the cutest picture of his niece?
She's such a cute little thing. That guy doesn't care about his niece. He wants you to see his abs,
right?
And then there was this next post here. Maybe it's just me because I don't see it, but for real,
what is it that makes guys think I'm irresistible? I'm so confused.
Somebody, after they posted that, somebody commented, it's your humility that makes you attractive
or your sarcasm.
Now, we are living in a look at me world right now.
In fact, that's what's at the heart of boasting. Look at me. I want glory for me.
But here's what's happening. The look at me heart is really a statement that we are not finding our
worth and value and joy in what God thinks of us. We're finding it in what others think of us. You
see that? Boasting is me saying what other people think of me is so important that I will try to
provoke praise for myself.
I'm less concerned with what God thinks of me than I am what you think of me.
It's an identity issue. Boasting is looking for love in all the wrong places, looking for worth and
value in all the wrong places. We're living as if the chief end of man is to glorify us,
but
it's to glorify God. It's not to show others how great you are. It's to show others how great he
is. Here's what the Bible says about boasting. Proverbs 27.2, let another praise you.
Not with your own mouth, a stranger, and not your own lips. Listen, that's just a good rule of
thumb. Let somebody else brag about you. If you have to pay them a little bit to do it,
that's worth it. That's not how you do it.
Let someone else sing your praises. Don't do it yourself. Proverbs 25, 27. It is not good to eat
much honey, nor is it glorious to seek one's own glory.
And 2 Corinthians 10, Paul says, let the one who boasts.
boast in the Lord.
For it is not the one who commends himself who is approved, but the one whom the Lord commends.
Boasting is a sin because it robs God of glory and it takes the focus off him and puts it on you.
And the antidote for boasting is what? It's humility.
It's to be humble. It's to cultivate a heart of humility.
And the place to go here when you're looking to cultivate a heart of humility is to go to
Philippians chapter 2, where the apostle Paul says, have this mind in yourselves,
which is yours in Christ Jesus. This should be your mindset, the same mindset Jesus had,
who though he was in the form of God, that's worthy of glory and praise, did not count equality
with God something to be grasped, hung on to cling to. but he emptied himself,
taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men, and being found in human form,
he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
He deserved glory, he put on humility, and he took our sins.
Therefore, here's the payoff, therefore God has highly exalted him. In his humility came
exaltation. given him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee
should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth. Every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is
Lord to the glory of God the Father. We have to replace boasting with the desire for the approval
and applause, excuse me, replace boasting and the desire for the approval and applause of men with
humility. A desire for the approval and applause of heaven, no matter what men think of us.
Now let me talk to students here for just a minute. Those of you who are students, junior high,
high school, even younger, listen for just a second. Next fall, I am going to my 50th high school
reunion. I know some of you go, Pastor Bob, that can't be, right? You're so young looking. Yes,
I know, but a little humble brag there.
50 years ago, I was in high school. And I've been thinking back on my high school days as I'm
getting ready for this reunion, and I've been just aware of how much all of us were so insecure and
how much we longed for the approval of our peers. All of us.
You ask your mom and dad about this. They will tell you, yes, it's true. We were all looking around
trying to get our peers to like us, approve us, to notice us.
I wanted all of that. I wanted people to think I was smart and cool and funny and good looking.
I wanted people to notice me. What I really wanted was their validation. I wanted to be liked and
respected. Most of us who are older people would like the chance, maybe we don't really want to do
this, but if we could go back and redo high school, we would do it differently today.
We would go back after all this time recognizing that the approval of your peers is momentary.
and shallow.
The approval of God in your life is eternal and substantive. And so if I were going back and
redoing high school, rather than being so focused on what does he think of me? How can I be a part
of this group? How can I fit in? How can I be liked? I would go back and I would try to have a
mindset that says, how can I bless these people? How can I minister to them? How can I be an agent
of God's grace where he's put me? in the lives of others. And take the focus off me and put it on
others.
In a couple of years, the people whose approval you're desperately seeking today,
they'll be gone somewhere. You may keep track of them on Facebook, but it'll start to fade.
But years from now, God will still be with you. He will never leave you or forsake you. It's your
relationship with him and his approval that you should be working to cultivate, not the approval of
men. Instead of being a look at me person, and I was one of the worst of these when I was in high
school.
You should be a look at God and how glorious he is kind of person. Cultivate humility.
And you do that by learning to boast in Jesus.
Humility put the focus back on Jesus. Look at this from 1 Peter chapter 5. Humble yourselves,
therefore, under the mighty hand of God, so that in the proper time he will exalt you.
That's what we should be. aiming for, hungering for. Okay, last of these, we're going to look at
one of the last characteristics of false teachers. They are flatterers, and we'll go back to Google
here. Google says a flatterer is a person who lavishes praise, often insincerely,
or a sycophant. Also a groveler, a fawner, a lackey,
and an obsequious person, a cow tower.
Why would somebody insincerely lavish praise?
on someone else.
Why would you exaggerate or say things that aren't true about another person?
What's the motive behind that? What's the goal? Well, it's all about manipulation. We do it because
we hope that by praising you, we will get benefit.
You will soften and give us what we want. Again, John Bloom helps us here with this flattery issue.
He says, flattery is a form of lying. And it's particularly insidious form because in the moment
flattery is spoken, it sounds so much like encouragement. And yet there's a heaven and hell
difference between the two.
Encouragement is truth spoken from a loving motive to increase the faith and hope of the hearer.
Flattery is a lie masquerading as encouragement from a selfish motive to manipulate the hearer in
order to achieve the flatterer's covert purpose.
Let me show you flattery in its most insidious form. This is in Mark chapter 12.
The Pharisees come to Jesus, and Mark says, and they sent to him some of the Pharisees and some of
the Herodians to trap him in his talk. And they came and said, look at what they said,
teacher, we know that you are true and do not care about anyone's opinion, for you are not swayed
by appearances, but truly teach the way of God.
You see how smarmy that is? They don't mean that. They don't believe that. They're saying that to
set him up. Is it lawful, then, to pay taxes to Caesar or not? Should we pay them or not? They have
flattered him in hopes that it will soften him and that he'll fall into a trap.
Of course, Jesus knew the motive. He saw right through what was going on. And Proverbs says
flattery is like a trap that's laid for somebody. You say these things so that they step in.
We're drawn toward flattery. When you are being flattered, you move into it. When somebody says,
you look nice today, you say, tell me more. I mean, you don't say that, but that's what you'd like
to hear, right? What else you got to say about me? The reason it works so well is because we care
so much about what people think of us. If someone pretends that they think highly of us, we are
more likely to do things that will please that person. to keep the flattery coming.
I mean, just think about how shallow we are.
Paul, in his letter to the Romans, at the end of the letter, he points out that this is going to be
characteristic of false teachers, flattery, and you need to be on guard. He says this, I appeal to
you, brothers, to watch out for those who cause divisions and create obstacles contrary to the
doctrine you've been taught. Avoid them, for such persons do not serve our Lord Christ, but their
own appetites, and by smooth talk and flattery, They deceive the hearts of the naive.
That's what a flatterer does. He deceives the heart of the naive person with smooth talk.
We need to be careful that we are not flatterers, but we also need to be careful that we are not
seduced by flattery. Some of us are so hungry for words of encouragement and affirmation,
and manipulators pick up on that. A manipulator, if they sense that,
they will lay it on because then they have power over you. The Bible says don't be a flatterer.
Instead of being a flatterer, you're to speak the truth in love. Instead of trying to manipulate
someone, your goal should be to speak the truth in love. Love does not rejoice in wrongdoing.
Love rejoices in the truth.
Don't manipulate people for your own purposes. Bless them.
Seek their good.
And all of this is a lot to think about, isn't it?
The danger of a message like this is that We can hear this call away from these sinful practices in
our own heart, and we can go away from here thinking, I need to try harder not to grumble or to be
more content or to care less about the approval of others, not to be manipulative. And we do need
to try harder. We do need to strive in our goal of sanctification. We do need to strive to grow in
godliness. But the only way you will make progress in these areas is if you get to that root,
get to the middle column we were talking about. What's at the heart here? You see, I don't think
it's possible for someone to be simultaneously believing the gospel, believing that God sent his
son to die in your place, live a perfect life on your behalf, die in your place,
and then be raised again. so that you can be reconciled to God, be adopted into his family,
and live forever with him, I don't think it's possible for somebody to be believing that that's
true and be a grumbler simultaneously.
You can't be believing this and grumbling at the same time. Or to put it another way, if you're
grumbling in that moment, you are not believing and thinking about the goodness of God in the
gospel.
I don't think you can believe the gospel and simultaneously be malcontented.
Or if you are malcontented, you've forgotten the gospel in that moment. You're not believing that
God is working all things for your good. I don't think it's possible to believe the gospel and at
the same time be boasting, unless you're boasting in Christ. If you're boasting,
you've forgotten that in your flesh dwells no good thing. That if there's anything good in you,
it's because God's at work in your life. Your boast is in you and not in him. You've forgotten the
gospel in that moment. I don't think it's possible to be believing the gospel and be manipulating
others with flattering words at the same time. The false teachers in Jude's day were demonstrating
with their grumbling, their malcontentedness, their boasting, and their flattery that they did not
love God and did not believe the gospel.
So when these things are true about you, grumbling, discontentedness, boasting, flattering. In that
moment, you're not believing the gospel. You need to remind yourself of the gospel. You need to
preach the gospel to yourself because that's the root issue that will weed out these expressions of
sin in your life. Remind yourself of what's true about you apart from God's love for you and his
saving work. What does that mean? I have this in my notes. It doesn't make any sense. Remind
yourself that God loves you. that his saving work in your life is what gives your life meaning and
value. Remind yourself of your identity as his child, that your worth and your value is in him.
Remind yourself that following him and living to please him is where you find your greatest joy.
Remind yourself you have a hope and a future. Remind yourself of these things regularly,
daily, and that will work to root out the grumbling, the malcontentedness,
the boasting, and the flattery. If you're here this morning, And you've never believed the gospel
in the first place, or you're not sure even what we're talking about when we talk about the gospel.
Let me just say, believing the gospel is not... an aisle and praying a prayer,
although you may do those things as a part of believing the gospel, but it's the believing that
matters, not the aisle walking or the prayer praying. It's about believing that you are,
in fact, a sinner. You confess your sins to God. You confess your need to be forgiven for your sin.
Surrender your life to Jesus. You give him control of your life. You set aside your agenda and say,
I'm going to follow God's agenda. That's what it is to believe the gospel.
It's a reprioritization, a reorientation of your life, and it's activated in you by the Spirit.
If the Spirit is calling you today to respond to this gospel,
do not harden your heart against that, but respond in this moment. And if you have questions about
the gospel, come see me. Let's talk. Let's visit. Let's get a better understanding of this.
Believing the gospel, by the way, is something we do at the beginning of our journey of faith, but
it's something we continue to do over and over again. You've heard me say this many times. It is
the life of the Christian to re-repent and re-believe the gospel over and over again on a daily
basis. That's the rhythm. Re-repent, re-believe the gospel. That's how we deal with these things.
Pray with me. Father,
your word is living and active, and it's sharper than any two-edged sword.
It divides us. It cuts us. And we acknowledge this morning that as we've looked at your word,
we have seen in our own lives where we fall short and where we've been careless or casual,
where we have not taken seriously what your word says.
Lord, I know that's true for me. I imagine that is true for my brothers and sisters here. Help us
to root our lives in the gospel and do your work in us to conform us to the image of Christ as we
believe in you. And for any who are here or any who are watching online who have never responded to
the gospel with surrender, who have never acknowledged the reality of their sin,
turn to you for forgiveness, for hope. Lord, I pray that they would do that today.
Begin their new life in you by crying out to you.
We ask these things in your name. Amen.