Sermon Cloud

Scripture Reading: 2 Peter 2

For this morning, the Lord has lain on my heart a passage from Deuteronomy to share with you.

• It is not often that you hear a message from Deuteronomy, but I believe that the message that I have for you today is as relevant as it was to the nation of Israel 2500 years ago.

• I want to talk to you about something that Moses seemed to think was important to talk to the Nation of Israel about after they came out of their bondage in Egypt and were separated to God and just before they entered into the promised land.

• Are you familiar with this time in the history of Israel?

• Explain

Deuteronomy 13:1 “If there arises among you a prophet or a dreamer of dreams, and he gives you a sign or a wonder, ²“and the sign or the wonder comes to pass, of which he spoke to you, saying, ‘Let us go after other gods’—which you have not known—‘and let us serve them,’ ³“you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams, for the Lord your God is testing you to know whether you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul. ⁴“You shall walk after the Lord your God and fear Him, and keep His commandments and obey His voice, and you shall serve Him and hold fast to Him. ⁵“But that prophet or that dreamer of dreams shall be put to death, because he has spoken in order to turn you away from the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt and redeemed you from the house of bondage, to entice you from the way in which the Lord your God commanded you to walk. So you shall put away the evil from your midst.

• I have already in my introduction given you a little background to our text, but let's look a little closer at where Moses is coming from.

• Moses wrote this from a public address (probably three of them) which he gave the people just before he was to die and they were to enter the Promised Land.

• He did it to remind them of the importance of all that the Lord had told them trough him.

• Deuteronomy means “second law.” that is, he is telling them this stuff again, for their own good.

   

• Philippians 3:1 Finally, my brethren, rejoice in the Lord. For me to write the same things to you is not tedious, but for you it is safe.

• Interestingly enough, he goes on to warn the Philippians of the same thing we see Moses warning about here.

• Philippians 3:2 Beware of dogs, beware of evil workers, beware of the mutilation! ³For we are the circumcision, who worship God in the Spirit, rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh,

• As Paul encourages the Philippians he also warns them that there will be false teachers who will try to mislead them.

• Like the Philippians and like ancient Israel, we need to hear the truth of God's word again and again and again and again and again and again...

• You get the idea!

• The nation of Israel was a redeemed people, right?

• They had been slaves and not really a nation at all, just a family of about 70 people who came to the land of Egypt a few hundred years before and were eventually enslaved.

• God delivered them through Moses and the ten plagues.

• You guys know this stuff, right?

• As they were wandering in the wilderness because of their disobedience, Moses spoke to them one last time in order to encourage them to live like people who had been redeemed by God.

So let me ask you, are you redeemed people?

• Do you know the Gospel of Jesus Christ?

• Ephesians 2:11 Therefore remember that you, once Gentiles in the flesh—who are called Uncircumcision by what is called the Circumcision made in the flesh by hands— ¹²that at that time you were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. ¹³But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.

• The Blood of Jesus Christ is the price that was paid for the redemption of the People of God.

• Have you trusted God, that He made provision for the forgiveness of your sin?

• Has He redeemed you?

• Titus 2:11 For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men, ¹²teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in the present age, ¹³looking for the blessed hope and glorious appearing of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, ¹⁴who gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from every lawless deed and purify for Himself His own special people, zealous for good works.

• The grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men.

• Though we do not all take advantage of it.

• But when we do, it teaches us something;

• that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in the present age, ¹³looking for the blessed hope and glorious appearing of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ.

• Why? Because He has redeemed all those who trust in Him.

• ¹⁴who gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from every lawless deed and purify for Himself His own special people, zealous for good works.

• We are all in need of redemption.

• We are all first slaves of sin and enemies of God.

• Yet in His goodness He has chosen to make the ultimate payment for that sin in order to buy us out of that slavery and make us a part of His family.

• Colossians 2:11 In Him you were also circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the sins of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, ¹²buried with Him in baptism, in which you also were raised with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead. ¹³And you, being dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He has made alive together with Him, having forgiven you all trespasses, ¹⁴having wiped out the handwriting of requirements that was against us, which was contrary to us. And He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross.

• If you have trusted in the Gospel of Jesus Christ and been baptized, that is a sign that you are in a covenant with Him.

• Like a wedding ring shows your love for a spouse, the obedience of baptism show your love for God and is a symbol of your death to the old you and a new life in Him.

• He brings you from death to life when He forgives your sins and removes every one of the laws that you ever broke, taking the penalty of them upon Himself in your place.

• Baptism does not save you but points to your understanding of what it means to be saved.

• So, has Jesus done this for you?

• If the Spirit of God is speaking to you right now I would challenge you to do something about it!

• What if Israel had heard Moses speak and was convinced that He was right and was speaking the very words of God, they saw the miracles and yet stayed in Egypt?

Now, These redeemed people were given a code of ethics, a standard of conduct that would govern their everyday lives.

• They were not given a system of good works to earn their salvation by.

• The ten commandments begin with these words; Deuteronomy 5:6 ‘I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.

• Then Moses goes on to give the commandments.

• Notice that it begins with bringing to remembrance the fact the God had already redeemed them.

• He brought them out of the Land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.

• It is on the basis of His goodness to them that God charges His people to live a life of obedience!

• Deuteronomy 10:12 “And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you, but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all His ways and to love Him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, ¹³“and to keep the commandments of the Lord and His statutes which I command you today for your good?

• Likewise, in the New Testament we are given the same type of command.

• Ephesians 4:17 This I say, therefore, and testify in the Lord, that you should no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles walk, in the futility of their mind, ¹⁸having their understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart; ¹⁹who, being past feeling, have given themselves over to lewdness, to work all uncleanness with greediness.

• The unbeliever lived for his personal desires.

• They do not know God and from this they live purely for self

• Pursuing their lusts, never able to get enough.

• Ephesians 4:20 But you have not so learned Christ, ²¹if indeed you have heard Him and have been taught by Him, as the truth is in Jesus: ²²that you put off, concerning your former conduct, the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, ²³and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, ²⁴and that you put on the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness.

• Again, are you a redeemed person?

• Do you know that Gospel of which I spoke earlier?

• If you do can you continue to walk like the heathen that you used to be?

• Rhetorical question.

• Answer, NO

• Romans 6:1 What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? ²Certainly not! (me ginomai) How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it? ³Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? ⁴Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. ⁵For if we have been united together in the likeness of His death, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of His resurrection, ⁶knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin.

Does this sound like a Christianity that is just believe in Jesus and live however you want?

• Does this sound like the Christianity that is preached on TV or in the church that you attend?

• Far too often it is not what we hear Christianity described as.

• “It not about rules, its about a relationship.”

• This is a very true statement, but let me ask you,

• What relationship are you in that has no rules?

• If you are in one it cannot be a very intimate one.

• Whether it is at work or with a spouse or a child, every relationship is governed by rules though they are often unspoken rules.

• I know a man who violated those rules in his relationship with his daughter...

• As human beings we do tend to become legalistic about rules.

• We think that somehow it makes us better than the next guy.

• We use them to guilt and shame others.

• This is not the place of rules in the Christian life.

• Listen to the Apostle Paul as he speaks to the Corinthians, 2 Corinthians 10:12 For we dare not class ourselves or compare ourselves with those who commend themselves. But they, measuring themselves by themselves, and comparing themselves among themselves, are not wise.

• We can always find someone more or less holy than ourselves.

• We are not to compare among ourselves.

• We have a standard and not one of us measures up.

• Philippians 3:12 Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected; but I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me. ¹³Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, ¹⁴I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

Can I tell you, our nation needs a good dose of Biblical Christianity.

• We need to be careful because there are a host of people out there telling us that Jesus came to make our lives better in the here and now.

• They are telling us that you just need to believe in Jesus and good works may or may not come later.

• They are minimizing sin which is the reason Christ came into the world in the first place.

• We need to hate sin as much as Jesus who was willing to die to redeem us from it.

• That must be a pretty serious subject for Him, huh?

And so back to our text; Oh yea, we had some verses from Deuteronomy that we began with, right?

• Like Israel, we are a redeemed people.

• Like Israel, we are called to live like redeemed people.

• And like Israel, we have people telling us that this is not the God we should worship.

• There were some pretty convincing false prophets that followed Moses' day.

• Some could even do miracles! Real Miracles!

Deuteronomy 13:1 “If there arises among you a prophet or a dreamer of dreams, and he gives you a sign or a wonder, ²“and the sign or the wonder comes to pass, of which he spoke to you, saying, ‘Let us go after other gods’—which you have not known—‘and let us serve them,’ ³“you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams, for the Lord your God is testing you to know whether you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul.

• Israel is told, that no matter how good they sound or even if they can perform miracles that they should not be listening to a prophet that leads them away from the true God.

• Now I know that the modern preachers on TBN or whatever are not peaching a god other than Jesus, but they are often times preaching another Jesus or another Gospel.

• Do you want a religion that makes you feel good?

• Do you want a religion that make no demands on your life?

• Do you want a religion that promises to just bless you all the time?

• This is not the religion that the Bible teaches.

• Any false prophet that is telling you that this is what God is promising is lying, even if he can do miracles!

• We have seen what the Bible says the life of a Christian should look like!

• The religions of the heathen on the Old Testament times were based on the needs and desires of life.

• Fertility, war, prosperity....

• Worship included immorality and gluttony, etc.

Deuteronomy 13:4“You shall walk after the Lord your God and fear Him, and keep His commandments and obey His voice, and you shall serve Him and hold fast to Him. ⁵“But that prophet or that dreamer of dreams shall be put to death, because he has spoken in order to turn you away from the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt and redeemed you from the house of bondage, to entice you from the way in which the Lord your God commanded you to walk. So you shall put away the evil from your midst.

• This is very serious stuff!

• These people are trying to make you forget what actually happened when you trusted Christ and to lead you into thinking that Jesus died to give you stuff.

• To indulge your desires.

• That is not what He has done.

• He has redeemed you from sin if you have trusted Him.

• Now he says, Ephesians 2:8 For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, ⁹not of works, lest anyone should boast. ¹⁰For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.

• You have been saved from the wrath of God by His grace so you should live like it!

• If the love of God has been shed abroad in your heart then it should shine back out to other people.

• The one who entices you to believe otherwise should be cut off!

• In Old Testament times this meant to be killed!

• With no posterity, their line was cut off!

• Deuteronomy 13:6 “If your brother, the son of your mother, your son or your daughter, the wife of your bosom, or your friend who is as your own soul, secretly entices you, saying, ‘Let us go and serve other gods,’ which you have not known, neither you nor your fathers, ⁷“of the gods of the people which are all around you, near to you or far off from you, from one end of the earth to the other end of the earth, ⁸“you shall not consent to him or listen to him, nor shall your eye pity him, nor shall you spare him or conceal him; ⁹“but you shall surely kill him; your hand shall be first against him to put him to death, and afterward the hand of all the people.

• That's kind of heavy huh? Serious stuff!

• At one time heretics in the church were burned.

• Not that this is necessarily a good thing, but I bet there would be a lot fewer of them today of we still practiced that.

So, what should we do when we encounter a false teacher?

• Someone who says, “If you believe in Jesus there are no boundaries”

• “Jesus really died to give you a life with all the stuff you ever wanted.”

• If you donate by credit card in the amount of your house payment then something spiritual happens in the credit card and your house will get paid off faster.

• Where is that in Scripture?

• God’s not about rules and rituals, just relationships…so are we.

2 John 1:6-11 This is love, that we walk according to His commandments. This is the commandment, that as you have heard from the beginning, that you should walk in it. (7) Because many deceivers have gone out into the world who do not confess Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh. This is a deceiver and the antichrist. (8) Look to yourselves, lest we should lose those things for which we worked, but that we should receive a full reward. (9) Everyone who transgresses and does not abide in the doctrine of Christ does not have God. He who abides in the doctrine of Christ, this one has both the Father and the Son. (10) If anyone comes to you and does not bring this doctrine, do not receive him into your house, and do not greet him; (11) for he who greets him shares in his evil works.