Guarding the Flock

SERMON: 2017-11-05--ac17186--guarding-the-flock SOURCE DURATION: 00:37:03.000 PROPOSED CUTS: 2 CONFIDENCE: 0.95 APPROVED: false REASON: Both the start and end segments are part of sustained theological exposition (discussing false teachings/Gnosticism and concluding with a statement on God's provision), which constitutes core sermon material. ACOUSTIC EVIDENCE: available ACOUSTIC MUSIC INTERVALS: none ACOUSTIC SPEECH OVERLAP: no ACOUSTIC BOUNDARIES APPLIED: none Inline CUT markers identify each proposed audio boundary after the relevant word. --- ORIGINAL TRANSCRIPT WITH PROPOSED CUTS MARKED --- [PROPOSED CUT 1 START at 00:00:00.000; remove through 00:32:40.970] [CUT] As we've been seeing in recent weeks, for three years now, the Apostle Paul has been proclaiming to the Ephesian church what he calls the whole council of God, and the whole council of God we've been seeing in recent weeks is the sum total of God's saving message through faith in Jesus. That saving message has two components to it. One component is believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved. The second component is if you don't believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, you're going to be lost eternally. That is sobering business. We've talked about that and that is why Paul says in verse 31 of this chapter to these Ephesian elders, "Remember that for three years I never stopped warning each of you night and day with tears." That is also why he said earlier in verse 26 and 27, "I declare to you today that I am innocent of the blood of all men for I have not hesitated to proclaim to you the whole will or the whole council of God." Paul is leaving them with a good conscience because he has done everything that he can to both talk about the positive side of the faith, which is the blessings of God in Christ Jesus, and the consequences, the negative side of the faith if people refuse to embrace the gospel message. And now as we said earlier, the time has come for Paul to leave the Ephesian church permanently. Verse 25, "Now I know that none of you among whom I have gone about preaching the kingdom will ever see me again." This is the last time that he is with the elders of the Ephesian church. And understandably that's a very traumatic experience for them. Not only will they miss him big time, but leaving them creates a leadership vacuum. The universe abhors vacuums because into the vacuum of his leadership, other people will try to step in and they will try to do damage to God's people because of their sinful purposes. And so Paul, ever on guard, ever wanting to protect God's people, warns them about that in the verses 29 to 31. He says, "I know that after I leave, savage wolves will come in among you and will not spare the flock. Even from your own number, men will arise and distort the truth in order to draw away disciples after them. So be on your guard." I want you to notice that in those couple of verses, there are two very distinct enemies that Paul warns against. The first is what he calls savage wolves. "I know that after I leave, savage wolves will come in among you and will not spare the flock." Savage wolves. And wolves of course are the traditional enemy of sheep. They are predators. They have no desire but to kill and to destroy and to scatter them. And they are savage in their attack. Some of you will remember stories that I've told about the early years of my youth when I was a shepherd for a couple of years. The story went like this. I had worked on the farm of a relative, had made a couple hundred dollars and was pondering what to do with my hundred, a couple hundred dollars when, and I don't even remember who it was, somebody suggested I ought to invest it in sheep. Very unwise decision in retrospect, but I did. I went out and I bought 25 sheep. Unfortunately, my oldest brother decided that since I had to look after 25 sheep, he bought 89 more and put me in charge of all of them. And what a challenge that was because our farm was fenced for cattle. It was not fenced for sheep. And if you know anything about sheep, sheep are not hindered by barbed wire fences. They just stick their head under and they get down on their knees and they wrap all their sweet little wool around the barbs and the barbed wire and once one is across, everybody else follows. So I ended up spending a lot of time in the field just guarding these sheep until we had enough time, effort, and money to get proper fencing for them. But the story that I'm about to relate to you happened early one morning. My father, whose bedroom was just across the road from where we kept our sheep, was awakened by a tremendous commotion in the field where the sheep were grazing or sleeping at that time and upon investigation discovered that I believe two neighboring dogs had gotten into my flock of sheep that night. And by the time he got me out of bed and I came to investigate what was happening, it was still very early in the morning, just around dawn, I could not believe my eyes because dead and dying sheep and lambs were everywhere. And I had a whole new appreciation for what the Bible calls savage wolves. If domesticated dogs can do that much damage, imagine what a savage wolf can do to a flock of sheep. It was a terrible experience and Paul says one of the things that's going to happen to you after I leave is wolves are going to come in and they're going to attack the Church of God. Now we know from the New Testament that these savage wolf attacks on the Christian Church at the time generally came in one of two forms. The first was persecution from Jew and Gentile. You'll recall that earlier on in Acts chapter 19, we have that whole story of the big riot in Ephesus headed up by Demetrius the silversmith, his business is suffering, he's got his business associates all riled up and they get the whole city riled up and it's an extremely dangerous situation for the church and for the Apostle Paul in particular and sets the stage for his leaving the city to continue on with the rest of his missionary journey. Jesus warns against that continually in the New Testament there are savage wolves who hate God's people, who hate what they stand for and who have no desire but to see you destroyed and torn down. And as I've said many times we live in a culture where increasingly the culture is anti-Christian values and where the courage of unbelievers is increasing to the point where persecution against Christians is becoming more and more prominent. That is what Paul is warning them against when he says savage wolves are going to come among you. There's a second kind of savage wolf though that's very common in the New Testament and including today and that comes from false teachers who are constantly trying to invade the church and lead God's people astray. Both in the Old Testament and in the New Testament one of the banes of the existence of God's people is false prophets or false apostles who are trying to lead God's people in directions where God does not want them to go. Jesus talks about it in the Sermon on the Mount he says to his disciples watch out for false prophets they come to you in sheep's clothing but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. In other words they blend in with the Christians they look like sheep but inside they don't have an interest in the well-being of the sheep they want to take advantage of you. And if you look at Paul's ministry himself then you will see that in addition to the persecution that he suffered from Jew and Gentile he also suffered from false brethren, false apostles, false prophets who constantly try to undermine his particular ministry. Here's what he says in second Corinthians chapter 11 concerning such people he says they are false apostles they are deceitful workmen masquerading as apostles of Christ and no wonder for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light it is not surprising then if his servants masquerade as servants of righteousness they look like they belong but they are ferocious wolves. So that's one of the groups that Paul warns against he says there are wolves out there they may look like sheep but their intention is to hurt and kill and destroy because they do not have the heart of Jesus and they do not have the spirit of Jesus. But then there's a second category of course that he warns against in this particular passage and that is troublemakers that are much closer to home even from your own number men will arise and distort the truth in order to draw away disciples after them it isn't just out there he says that you face an enemy the enemy can even be with Ian. These are people from your own number who distort the truth and the reason for distorting the truth is to draw away disciples after them they are sectarian they want to destroy the unity of the church and they want to build their own following and of course the history of the Christian church has been filled with people like that and there are some principles behind this that I want to take a few moments to try to explain to you so bear with me as I talk about the fact that every community of people in the world typically consists of a variety of constituents I don't know if you can read all of that the C here stands for constituents so constituency one two three four five and six making up the sum total of the community think of Canada we've just had the census of 2016 at least certain aspects of it the results come out and we know that Canada is increasingly a multicultural nation and so in Canada we have people of French extraction we have people of English extraction we have people of Western European extraction we have people of Caribbean extraction we have people of African extraction and now increasingly the largest number of immigrants coming to Canada are people of Asian extraction these are all very distinct communities and a community if the basic unit of society is the family then families make up tribes and society is by definition tribal in the sense that you have all these groups of people who are related either by culture or by language or by blood or by purpose now the challenge then and we need the picture back up again the challenge is how do you keep a multicultural community together Canada is becoming increasingly aware of the fact that we have all these diverse communities I didn't even think of mentioning the indigenous people who are of course in the news all the time now and growing four times faster statistically than the rest of the population well the world's answer to that is that you need common values that are mediated by leaders so here you have your values think of this as what we call the Canadian value and the circle around that represents the leaders who advance those kind of values to try to hold a society together now I got to tell you that long term that's going to fail and I can tell you why because we're trying to reverse the Tower of Babel without the Lord Jesus who alone can bring different cultures together God cursed the Tower of Babel to scatter the population into all these different language groups and when resources become limited and problems arise we'll talk about that in a moment then this cozy coexistence begins to fall apart and we've seen it in Europe we've seen it in the Middle East and sadly enough I suspect eventually we're importing that into Canada Canadian values alone will not hold this together now that's society but the church also consists of different constituencies even a church like this consists of different constituencies consider for example that some of us here are of Dutch extraction born and raised in the Christian church that's one constituency some of you are born and raised in other Christian traditions and you have joined our community because you have found an affinity with us others still were not raised in a Christian community at all found Christ here and have become part of Christian community now add to that you've got people separated by age and by language and by worship style and by preferences and by histories you can understand the challenge of building Christian community because everybody thinks what they have is the norm you will have noticed that the songs you like are the best songs in the world and the songs that somebody else likes are never as good as the songs you like that's just the reality so if the church is doing its job that is how the church is composed of different tribes tongues and languages what is the glue that unites us well you see the J standing for Jesus because it is in him that God intends to unite everything in heaven and on earth that's why I said earlier multiculturalism apart from Jesus is going to fail because what Pentecost represents in the book of Acts the outpouring of the Holy Spirit the declaration of the mighty acts of God in the languages of all the people represents a reversal of the Tower of Babel understand that please know the cultural linguistic and whatever else separates people changes when you come to faith in Jesus and you let Jesus do his thing he breaks the barriers and in Christ there is neither male nor female slave nor free Jew or Gentile you're all one in Christ Jesus and you're the children of God that's a genius of the church church doesn't always do a very good job living it out but that's why God gives the Holy Spirit and that's the beauty of the church that God can hold up this multicultural assembly of different people with different tastes different skin colors different languages different food styles different worship styles and makes them love the Lord their God with all of their heart soul strength and mind and love each other Jesus is the glue who holds his people together but he does it then by leaders that he establishes and so we have Jesus that ties all these different elements together and then we have leadership that God establishes that serves as ligaments of the body I love the way Paul puts it in Colossians chapter 2 verse 19 it's talking about the Lord Jesus from whom the whole body grows as God causes it to grow but supported and held together by its ligaments and sinews by its ligaments and sinews now some of you have dislocated shoulders some of you have dislocated knees you've been to the doctor and you know what it is that holds your body together it is ligaments and sinews and my understanding of that passage is that through the Lord Jesus and people that he raises up God bridges the gap among different constituencies in Christian community so that in uniting around Jesus and in uniting around the leadership that God raises up in Christian community you have these different groups that may not have much to do with each other they're joined to each other through Jesus and through the leadership to whom they give their loyalty and whom they trust does that make sense are you understanding what I'm trying to say here because you'll see where this is going in a moment and why Paul is concerned because you see the glue that holds this multicultural church at Ephesus together is not only Jesus but also the Apostle Paul he led them to the Lord he has a relationship with them day and night he has been teaching and warding in public and from house to house he's got a relationship with everybody but now what's going to happen he's going to go away and what do you think is going to happen when he goes away well we said it earlier it creates a leadership vacuum and in a leadership vacuum what happens is that to the degree to which the leaders are gone and to the degree to which Jesus begins to fade into the background guess what happens the relationship that the glue that binds everybody together through the sinews and ligaments that Jesus has provided now begins to fade away and who do you think steps into the vacuum I'll tell you who steps into the vacuum you see all these elves those are the leaders of the varying constituencies these are people who represent the value of these constituencies they have submitted themselves to Jesus and to the leaders that Jesus has raised up that glue is beginning to diminish and out of your own midst people begin to emerge who build their own constituencies I learned a long time ago that the people that the leaders that people elect and this is true across the board of democracy is not necessarily are not necessarily the people who make the best leaders did you know that who do people elect as their leaders those they believe best represent their interests why do you think Trump is president of the United States because he is perceived as best representing the interests of a certain segment of the population just like Hillary was viewed as the best person to represent and other portion of the community so when a vacuum a leadership vacuum arises and this is what Paul's talking about what happens is that other leaders step in and you have depending on you know how devoted they are to Jesus and how committed they are to the purposes of God you have a breakdown in the sum total of the community and each of these communities becomes fragmented particularly when resources become limited particularly when times get hard you've seen this in Europe you've seen this in the Middle East people that have lived side by side for generations and have gotten along with each other somebody stirs them up and you have neighbors turning each other in and neighbors killing each other and you say oh that'll never happen to me and that'll never be Mike's don't be so sure don't be so sure don't be so sure because Satan is sly and he knows how to play on our fears and he knows to play on our places of wounding to make us think that if we don't defend ourselves and stand up for our own rights nobody else is going to so just to move this forward now if you're with me here in the early church there were two heresies two distorted teachings that were constantly trying to invade the church and do serious damage the first is what I would call a return to observing the law of Moses I returned to observing the law of Moses when the gospel was preached it was always preached first to the Jews many Jews responded to the gospel and thousands of Jews were swept up into the Christian church these were people who all their lives had lived under the law of Moses they observed mosaic rituals they knew they had been handed down by God and though they had come to Jesus they tended to slide back into observing the law of Moses they wanted to return to circumcision they wanted to return to observing seasons and special days they wanted to both be Jewish and Christian at the same time and it sounded perfectly plausible to them because what could honor God more than if you were trying to observe the law Paul in the book of Galatians addresses that issue and here's what he says to them and you can you can sense his anger he says you foolish Galatians who has bewitched you interesting word because it means that their spiritual warfare involved in this there are the elemental spirits of the universe who try to take you from grace put you back under the law that's the whole topic in itself who has bewitched you before whose very eye your very eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified I would like to learn just one thing from you did you receive the spirit by observing the law or by believing what you heard are you so foolish after beginning with the spirit are you now trying to attain your goal by human effort do you understand what the issue is with what the New Testament calls the Judaizers is it wrong to leave right is it wrong to want to observe the law of most that's not the issue the issue is what makes you acceptable before God is it your observance of the law is it by living right does God love you more does he give you the spirit better because you are a good person or does he give you the spirit by coming just as you are leaning on Jesus and knowing that because a him you are righteous before God and the law does not make any difference you observe the law out of love for Jesus it's not the keeping of the law that makes you a child of God can I say it clearly enough that is the issue and that is the issue that God's people slide into again and again most of us who become Christians if we fall away we don't necessarily fall away into the bad things of the world some of us do obviously but we tend to slide back into legalism we slide back into thinking I'm just slightly better than you are because I don't do what you do and I'm a little holier because I practice more Christian disciplines than you do and we feel kind of smug about ourselves and we fail to understand that Paul says in Christ Jesus neither circumcision or uncircumcision makes any difference what makes the difference is faith working through love see the thing with the distortion of the gospel is that you only need to be off a fraction of a degree it looks imperceptible I could preach you a sermon I think I could maybe I think I could preach you a sermon that was just off enough to fall into the category of being a Judaizer many of you might or might not notice it because it would be off that little but all you have to do is be off a fraction of a degree and what happens down the road you end way out to lunch Paul gets red haunt I mean this issue is so critical in the book of Galatians that Peter remember Peter called of God first to deliver the gospel to the curve to the household of Cornelius a Gentile Barnabas who was a man of a son of encouragement loved everybody they got caught up in this to the point that Paul had to rebuke them publicly because he was so interested in preserving the truth of the gospel for the Gentiles Judaizers are always among us and the distortions are very slight but they build a different system not a system of salvation by grace through faith but a system of salvation that is subtly rooted in my background in my character in how I live and in how I observe things before the face of God okay one more heresy then we're going to be done for this morning the second heresy that the New Testament Church fought against tooth and nail for two to three hundred years and that is a philosophy that is called Gnosticism it's rooted in Greek philosophy it's very complex in its sum total but really boils down to this the Gnostics thought that creation physical creation was fundamentally bad and the way that you got redeemed from being fundamentally bad was not by coming to faith in Jesus who would renew us but by acquiring what they called gnosis Gnosticism the word gnosis means knowledge and they believed that if you had insight that other people did not have and you could find the right theory to live by then you could be delivered from from the power of the flesh and you could live your life in a way that mattered to God ironically the outcome of that was it didn't matter what you did in your body so you could sin all you want but God would love you anyway because you see you had an edge over other people you had a gnosis that other people did not have [CUT] this was so pervasive in the [PROPOSED CUT 1 END at 00:32:40.970; resume after this marked segment] culture that both the book of Colossians and first John are used of God to address it listen to what Paul says writing to the Colossians to eight see to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ the basic principles of this world the basic the elemental spirits of the universe I believe are demonic structures that shape the philosophical thinking of people that that lead us away from grace in Christ and that teach us that if only we tried it harder there are ways around Jesus to be righteous and to be holy and for the Gnostics that involved special revelation special feeling special insights the church fought Gnosticism for two to three hundred years John talks about it also one John chapter four dear friends do not believe every spirit test the spirits to see whether they are from gone because many false prophets have gone out into the world many false spirits have gone out into the world if you read the rest of that passage he talks about what the test is to see if the spirits are from God and if you remember the passage you might remember what is the test has Jesus come in the flesh if Jesus has come in the flesh and you believe that Jesus has come in the flesh that is to say was truly human then you're listening to the spirit of Lord the spirit of Gnosticism denies the reality of humanity Jesus wasn't really real the result is that real people cannot really be saved in the real world how many people do you know who don't believe that the gospel can fundamentally change people for the better in the here and now by the power of God's Holy Spirit that's a form of Gnosticism it happens everywhere so Paul says you got two problems that you're going to face wolves they're going to try to take you out man and he says from within you've got people who want to build their own following and they will do that by distorting the truth of Jesus I'm only halfway through but I think we better stop out of consideration for you but I want you to do some thinking read the passage that we have read this morning what's the solution that Paul raises up for the dilemma that we face in other words how can God's people be protected from savage wolves and from wolves in sheep clothing from within or without that try to take us places where we ought not to go the New Testament is so committed to the truth of the gospel because only Jesus saves and if the enemy can wean us away from Jesus into all kinds of fanciful speculations and wonderful spiritual experiences and God knows what he's got it by the nose because he knows the end will lead to our destruction thank God that he cares for the church and that he's made provision that the [PROPOSED CUT 2 START at 00:36:58.960; remove through 00:37:03.000] church can stand firm come hell or high water [CUT] [CUT] [PROPOSED CUT 2 END at 00:37:03.000; resume after this marked segment]