Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Do You Take False Teaching Seriously? | New Testament | 2 Corinthians 11

Episode Date: July 13, 2023

Are you on the lookout for false teachers? What is the danger of false teachers? In today's episode, Patrick shares from 2 Corinthians 11 to unpack Paul's warning against false teachers in Corinth. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Join the TMBT community in reading the entire New Testament in one year. Get your FREE reading plan here. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it with others, so others can find it too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter@TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: 2 Corinthians 11

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Patrick Miller. The cuckoo is a strange bird by any account, partially because it's actually considered a parasite or a brood parasite, if you're a scientist. A mommy cuckoo bird goes and finds the nest of a different bird, and it waits for that bird to leave, and then the mommy cuckoo lays its own egg in the other bird's nest. When the other bird arrives, it's not smart enough to realize that there's an extra egg. Now, when the baby cuckoo hatches, its first instinct is to kill the other hatchlings.

It does this by pushing their eggs out of the nest that they haven't hatched yet. But if they have hatched, don't watch videos of this on YouTube. It's kind of disturbing. The young cuckoo will try to get the other hatchlings onto its back and knock them out of the nest while they're still alive. So they die when they hit the ground. The bird who built the nest?

Well, it's none the wiser. It doesn't know that there's a murderous hatchling in its midst. It has no idea that this chick isn't its chick. No, it treats the cuckoo hatchling like one of its own. It feeds it, it cares for it, and it sees it off into the world. Now, as the cuckoo grows, it actually fakes extreme hunger by constantly shaking and quaking whenever its fake mom arrives. And this tells the nesting bird that its chick is starving and causes the nesting bird to hunt more than it needs to, sometimes to the point of deadly exhaustion. What a about mommy and daddy cuckoo. Well, they're off in Mexico enjoying some margaritas. No, okay, maybe not

that, but you get the picture. Something similar can happen inside of our churches when false teachers or false prophets swoop into a healthy congregation and covertly push out the healthy teachers. Unwary Christians won't even notice. They aren't on the lookout for false teachers. This is exactly what happened in Corinth after Paul left. False teachers who had called themselves super apostles swooped in with false teaching. Unlike Paul, they were trained speakers. They were eloquent. They exuded strength and power. And for that reason, no one noticed the truth. They were parasites. Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 11, But I am afraid that just as Eve was deceived by the serpent's cunning, your minds may somehow be led astray from your sincere and pure devotion to Christ. For if someone

comes to you and preaches a Jesus other than the Jesus we preach to you, or if you receive a different spirit from the spirit you received, or a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it easily enough. I don't think I am in the least inferior to these super apostles. I may indeed be untrained as a speaker, but I do have knowledge. We have made this perfectly clear to you in every way. Was it a sin for me to lower myself in order to elevate you? by preaching the gospel of God to you free of charge? I robbed other churches by receiving support from them so as to serve you. And when I was with you and you needed something, I was not a burden to anyone.

For the brothers who came from Macedonia supplied what I needed. I have kept myself from being a burden to you in every way and will continue to do so. As surely as the truth of Christ is in me, nobody in the regions of Achaia will stop this boasting of mine. Why? Because I don't love you? No, God knows I do. And I will keep on doing what I am doing in order to cut the ground from under those who want an opportunity to be considered equal with us and the things they boast about. For such people are false prophets, deceitful workers, masquerading as apostles of Christ. And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light. It's not surprising then if his servants also masquerade as the servants of righteousness. their end will be what their actions deserve. Paul is clearly, deeply concerned. Because he loves the Corinthians.

He took little, actually nothing from them because he loves them so much. But now these false prophets has swooped in to plunder them and to lead them astray. And so I wonder, what about you? Do you take false teaching seriously? Do you pay attention to the content of someone's teaching or the eloquence of their speech? Do you pay attention to the truthfulness of their words or to the impressiveness of their appearance? I had this happen to me in my own faith. I became a Christian in 2007, right as a pastor named Mark Driscoll in Seattle, was beginning to become famous. And because he was funny, he was eloquent,

and he was an excellent teacher who exuded masculinity and strength. I simply believe that whatever he said was true. But the truth was that he was a false teacher. He taught men to be bullies. He called unkind words kindness he trained husbands to demand sex from their wives whether they consented or felt comfortable with those requests he trained people to do demon hunts that left victims demoralized and dehumanized i could go on and on but i learned an important lesson false teachers are out there some teach false doctrines they teach you to trust yourself express yourself and be true to yourself maybe you won't recognize it because you've grown up in a culture that trains us all to think exactly like that. In fact, a message like that might sound eloquent and beautiful, but it's a parasite.

Or sometimes false teachers train us in rugged individualism. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps. God helps those who help themselves. Well, you'll never find those words in the Bible. Instead, the Bible trains us to be communitarians who serve the needs of the community before our individual needs. Rugged individualism is a parasite. Or maybe they're training you to doubt the Bible. No, you shouldn't take what the Bible says seriously about sex or marriage or sexual orientation or gender or whatever. It's an ancient book after all and kind of a confusing one anyway. Deconstructing the Bible, that's a parasite. We must not be caught unaware like Adam and Eve in the garden. No, we have to stay alert because if we give our hearts to false teaching, we steal our hearts from the one true king.

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