Again, let me say welcome to you this morning, and I'm excited to open God's Word together.
You know, we all carry around with us certain beliefs and assumptions that we feel are true,
and yet sometimes to our great chagrin we find out they're not true.
So, for instance, most of us would assume, I think, that toilet seats are covered in germs, right?
If I told you to eat a meal off a toilet seat, you wouldn't do it, and you'd probably be wise not to do it.
But research consistently shows that, in fact, toilet seats are relatively clean.
Feels like they would be dirty, that feels true, but in fact they're relatively clean.
They're regularly cleaned and disinfected, so in terms of surfaces in our lives, they're one of the better surfaces to be in contact with.
Do you know what has ten times more germs on it than your average toilet seat, though?
Your smartphone.
True story.
So that's one kind of example.
Another example would be the claim that Napoleon was short.
Feels true.
We've heard it a lot.
Not true.
In fact, Napoleon was slightly above average in his day in France for a man.
Feels true.
Not true.
Lots of examples like that, right?
Go outside with your hair wet, you're more likely to get a cold.
Feels true.
Not true.
When you swallow chewing gum, it stays in your body for seven years.
Feels true.
Not true.
Right?
For most of us, not true.
Right?
So lots of examples.
Years ago, Stephen Colbert coined this term that I feel has only gotten more useful with age,
and that's the term truthiness.
You familiar with this term?
Truthiness.
Truthiness, the idea that there are things that we believe because they feel true,
or because we want them to be true, rather than because they are known to be true or based in fact.
And Colbert mainly applied the concept of truthiness to news media and the problem of fake news.
But actually here in 2 Corinthians 11, we see a completely different example of truthiness.
And this is truthiness when it comes to the gospel itself.
We're in a series in 2 Corinthians, and this week we're going to come to the crux of the whole issue in Corinth.
The reason that Paul had written all of these letters, the reason he was so concerned and filled with anxiety over the church,
is because of truthiness that was plaguing the church.
So whether you're here as a longtime Christian or a new convert,
whether you're here as somebody who is not sure what you believe,
maybe this is your first time in church in a long time or ever,
regardless of where you find yourself spiritually this morning,
this is perhaps the greatest spiritual danger there is.
And I know that sounds hyperbolic,
but this is perhaps the greatest, if not the oldest,
spiritual danger that we face in our lives.
So we're going to look at this as we look at 2 Corinthians 11.
First we're going to look at what's the problem,
and then why does it matter, and then what can be done.
So let's pray.
Lord, we thank You for Your Word,
and we thank You that Your Word, because of Pentecost,
isn't just ink and paper.
We're not here to reflect on human insights or wisdom.
Lord, we're here because You are a God who dwells in and among Your people.
Your Holy Spirit is here.
Your Holy Spirit can take these ink and paper words
and turn them into words of flesh.
Lord, as we are here not only to read and hear Your Word,
but to see Your Word, to encounter Your Word in Jesus Christ.
And so, Lord, as we encounter the Word made flesh,
would You turn our hearts from stone to flesh, Lord?
Would You change us, bless us, mold us, Lord, as only You can.
We pray this in Your Son's holy name.
Amen.
So, first of all, what is the problem that we are zeroing in on?
The context of this, as we've said in earlier sermons,
is essentially years earlier, Paul had come
and he had started this church in Corinth.
He was preaching the gospel, people converted,
and the church was born there.
And then Paul, when he felt like the church was in good hands,
he appointed elders to oversee the church,
he moved on to take his mission elsewhere.
And then, not long after, other leaders arrived in the church
and they began to preach and teach.
And a lot of people were very impressed by these new leaders.
Verse 5, Paul sardonically refers to these new leaders as super apostles.
And these are highly persuasive and compelling teachers.
They'd all been trained as professional orators,
and rhetoric was a big deal in this day.
The way of speaking, your style of speaking,
was a way of signaling that you were highly educated,
incredible, and worth listening to.
And so, these were all trained rhetoricians,
and they're speaking in the most impressive ways.
And the problem is, these super apostles, Paul begins to realize,
are preaching a truthy gospel as opposed to the true gospel.
They're preaching a truthy version of the gospel.
Paul says in verse 4,
for if someone comes and proclaims another Jesus than the one we proclaimed,
or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received,
or if you accept a different gospel from the one you accepted,
you put up with it readily enough.
He's referring to their teaching as a different Jesus,
a different spirit, a different gospel.
And in this case, a different gospel meant that they were teaching a version
of what we might call Christian triumphalism,
or the theological term would be an over-realized eschatology,
a version of what we might think of as a prosperity gospel of sorts.
So, according to the Bible scholar D.A. Carson,
they're emphasizing things like spiritual power,
and exaltation with Christ, and ecstatic spiritual experiences,
and freedom, and triumph, and victorious living,
and leadership, and religious success.
And they looked the part.
They were successful.
They looked successful.
They had nice clothes.
They were suppressing, however, those aspects of Christianity
that stressed things like meekness.
They were suppressing the idea of servanthood.
They rarely mentioned the need for obedience.
They rarely talked about or evidenced humility.
You would never hear a sermon about the need to follow Christ in His suffering
if you are to follow Him in His crown.
Notice they were not denying the gospel altogether.
They weren't denying Jesus.
Some of what they said was true,
and they could actually point to Bible verses
to back up the claims they were making.
They could proof text their sermons.
But in their teaching,
they were subtly redefining the gospel
to make it more palatable and attractive,
so not surprisingly,
many of the Corinthians flocked to these teachers.
They were excited about these new ideas.
They found them very empowering,
very enlivening.
Now, next week, we're going to talk a lot more
about the relationship between Paul
and these super apostles
and the difference between their ministry credentials,
the ways they boast about their legitimacy.
But for now, what I want to do
is to draw out the implications
of what we've just said before we move on.
The problem that we're talking about this morning
is not the problem of unbelief.
Certainly, that's an issue for some of us.
But the problem in view here
is far more subtle
and far more insidious.
These are well-meaning people,
ranging from new converts to mature believers,
who go to church,
who listen to this teaching,
and they believe that they're hearing the gospel.
They believe that what they're being taught
is the true gospel.
For the most part,
they have no idea that they have,
as Paul says,
bought into a different gospel
than the one Paul proclaimed.
And, you know,
the same problem exists today,
only on a much larger scale.
Everywhere you look,
there are prominent speakers
and podcasts
and thought leaders
and Instagram gurus
and books
and articles
all selling truthy versions
of the gospel.
You know,
some examples
that I've sort of personally encountered
over the years,
it's very common
to speak with people
who assume
that the gospel
is a kind of moral gospel.
That's one very common example
of a truthy gospel.
The moral gospel
says something like,
all good people go to heaven,
and God essentially simply
wants us to be good people,
to be nice people,
to be decent people,
to recycle,
to teach our kids
to say,
oh my gosh,
instead of,
oh my God.
And if we are those kinds of people,
then we will be saved
and go to heaven.
And you hear that,
and we've heard it so often
that many people hear that,
and that feels true.
That feels true.
That feels right.
But it's not true.
Right?
If you really penetrate
into what's being said there,
it's actually the exact opposite
of the gospel.
Nothing in that statement,
all good people go to heaven,
is true.
First of all,
the ultimate promise
of the gospel
is not that we go to heaven.
It's a resurrected body
and a renewed world.
And the great miracle
of the gospel
isn't that good people
get saved,
it's that bad people,
sinful people,
people who are hopelessly lost,
get saved.
Right?
And so it's actually
the opposite of the gospel.
Another thing that you're likely
to hear in our culture
is some version
of what we might call
a therapeutic gospel.
This says,
Jesus came to help us
live a happy life,
to be our true selves,
to live however we want,
as long as we are happy,
however we define
that happiness.
Again, feels true,
feels right
to many people.
Not true.
God's ultimate aim
isn't to make us happy,
it's to make us holy.
Right?
One day we will be
completely satisfied
in Jesus,
but until then
we're probably going to face
tremendous hardship.
And yet it's often
in those times of suffering,
and this is a really hard thing
for us to wrestle with,
it's often in those times
of suffering
that we most experience
intimacy with Jesus
and grow in holiness.
You say,
where do you see that
in Scripture?
Paul's entire life.
We'll talk about that
more next week.
So there are many more
examples of truthy Gospels
that we could give.
The prosperity Gospel,
the idea that if you
give yourselves
and your money to Jesus,
He'll bless you
with health and wealth
and prosperity.
The self-improvement Gospel,
that the Gospel is really
about helping us
maximize our potential.
It gives us six steps
to a better marriage
or eight steps
to a healthier lifestyle.
The universal Gospel,
love means acceptance.
Because God is love,
He should accept everybody
regardless of who they are,
what they believe,
how they live.
The social justice Gospel,
the Gospel is really
about becoming aware
of privilege
and overturning
oppressive power structures.
The political Gospel,
many versions
of the political Gospel.
Well, Jesus really
at the end of the day
was a socialist.
Well, at the end of the day,
it's very clear
that Jesus was a capitalist.
Jesus was obviously
a refugee.
Jesus was an immigrant.
Jesus sides with the poor.
Jesus sides with America.
Right?
In one way or another,
Jesus takes sides
in our politics,
isn't it clear,
from Scripture?
And see,
all of these versions
of the Gospel,
they all feel true
to some people,
but they've all been diluted
and subtly redefined.
And here's the real issue.
Most people can't tell
the difference.
Most of us will hear that
and we will just sort of
nod our heads.
Right?
Not all of them,
but some of them.
And so some of us
might hear this
and say,
okay, that's great,
but why gatekeep the Gospel?
Right?
Why police it?
Right?
We live in a culture
where people are free
to believe what they want.
Why don't you just let people
believe what they want to believe?
And whatever version
of the Gospel
they want to believe,
let them believe it.
What's the big deal?
So why does this matter?
And from the text,
we see three reasons
why this actually does matter,
why the stakes
are actually fairly high
with this issue,
higher than we might think.
The first reason this matters
is this.
The true Gospel
isn't just about beliefs.
We're not simply here
to debate theological abstractions.
The true Gospel
is actually about a relationship,
a very important relationship.
Paul says in verses 1 and 2,
I wish you would bear with me
in a little foolishness.
He's being kind of playful here.
Do bear with me,
for I feel a divine jealousy for you
since I betrothed you
to one husband
to present you
as a pure virgin to Christ.
Now, that's no accident
that he's using this metaphor.
One of the primary metaphors,
if not the primary metaphor
in all of Scripture
for the relationship
that God desires to have with you
and with me
is the metaphor of marriage.
Right?
When Paul talks about marriage
in Ephesians 5,
he says,
this mystery is profound
and I'm saying that it refers
to Christ and the church.
What's he saying there?
Human marriage is itself
as great as marriage can be.
One of the greatest relationships
you can have.
But even that is a pale shadow.
It's an icon.
It's a picture of something
far greater,
infinitely greater.
The relationship that God
desires to have
with you,
the people he made.
And that's a profound thought
that even the best marriages
on this planet
pale in comparison
to the kind of relationship
that God wants to have
with his people.
And guess what?
A lot of people want to be married,
can't be married.
A lot of people want to be
in a good marriage,
they're in a hard marriage.
But this relationship,
this is a relationship
that is open to
every single person
on the planet
if they come and ask.
So the stakes are fairly high.
You know, there's a reason
why we have so many longings
that will never be satisfied
in this life.
There's a reason why
no matter how great
your marriage is
or how great your job is
or how successful you are
or how much acclaim
or fame you receive,
there's a reason why
it's never enough.
There's a reason why
people get to the end
of their lives
of striving and fighting
and climbing the ladder
only to realize
they still feel empty.
They still feel regret.
St. Augustine famously said
in his confessions,
you've made us for yourself, Lord,
and our heart is restless
until it rests in you.
Why the restlessness?
Because you were made
for this relationship with God
and until you know that,
your life is not going
to make sense.
When someone repents
and believes the true gospel,
they become, in a sense,
betrothed to Christ,
meaning there's a promise.
One day that restlessness
will be satisfied in Him.
Right?
So the true gospel
is not just about beliefs.
It's about a relationship.
The second reason
this matters so much
is that truthy gospels
inoculate people
against the true gospel.
Right?
You know, inoculation
means giving somebody
a mild version of something,
a diluted version of something,
that then makes them
immune to the real thing.
Right?
And that's what we see here.
When…
After the Corinthians
bought into this exciting,
revised, updated,
evolved version of the gospel,
they begin to reject Paul
and his gospel.
They were immunized
against Paul's gospel.
Right?
So these super apostles,
they would wax eloquent
about how Jesus
is going to give you victory.
Jesus is going to overcome
all of your adversaries.
Jesus is going to heal
all of your ailments.
He's going to take away
all of your suffering.
He's going to make you successful.
He's going to give you
the spouse
that you've always wanted.
He's going to fill you
with spiritual power.
And they would go week
after week
and hear that kind of teaching.
And then you have Paul.
Right?
Paul's poor.
Paul's weak.
Paul's not speaking
like a trained orator.
Paul's,
in many people's opinions,
a rather boring public speaker.
And Paul has suffered.
Paul…
The only thing people
know about Paul,
if they've never known
anything else about Paul,
man, that guy suffered.
And so these people,
they hear all this preaching
and then they look at Paul.
And then they hear Paul
say things like,
well, actually,
suffering and weakness
are a central part
of the Christian life.
Actually,
Jesus was more blessed
than anyone.
And yet,
Jesus suffered more
than anyone.
Why would we think,
as Jesus' followers,
that our lives would be
any different?
And they would hear
that sermon
and they would say,
no thanks.
I want to go back
and hear this preaching
over here.
At the end of a sermon
like that,
I feel great.
I'm ready to tackle my day.
Paul,
you're kind of bumming me out.
You're kind of a downer.
You know,
there's an old saying,
whatever you convert people with,
you convert them to.
If you convert people
to a truthy gospel,
then that's what they're
going to want to hear
week in and week out.
The third reason this matters
is that truthy gospels
are actually profoundly
spiritually dangerous.
And here's where we really
get into the implication
of what Paul's saying here.
Verse 20,
Paul says that by bearing
with a false gospel,
these believers
are actually allowing
themselves to be enslaved.
They're allowing themselves
to be devoured
and taken advantage of.
This is strong language here.
I'll give you an example
of what that means.
If somebody believes
the prosperity gospel,
then they believe the idea
that the more I give myself
and more importantly
my money to Jesus,
meaning this certain
televangelist,
the more I'm going
to be blessed
with money and riches
and health and prosperity
in return.
But that promise
is never actually fulfilled
in the way that it is laid out.
And so what happens?
People give more
and they give more
and they never quite get
what's promised in return.
They're being taken advantage of,
as Paul would say.
If someone believes
the therapeutic gospel,
they believe that following Jesus
is about happiness
and contentment,
what happens when the bottom
drops out of life?
What happens when they get fired,
when their marriage falls apart,
when their kids hate them
and don't want to talk
to them anymore?
What happens then?
Right?
They look at all the promises
that were made,
Jesus is going to give you
a happy life full of contentment,
and they say,
well, this whole thing
must be bunk.
There must be nothing true to this.
And they're very likely
to probably just leave
the faith altogether.
If people are sold
some version of a political gospel,
what happens?
What does the political gospel do?
Does it create life,
flourishing,
unity,
joy,
togetherness?
No.
People become divided
from one another.
Churches are ripped apart.
Families are split apart.
Friendships that have lasted years
end in fiery ruin
because people no longer
have anything to talk about
that doesn't create conflict.
We've all experienced that
in the last couple of years.
You know,
there's this great term,
I think it came from Andy Crouch,
that we're all experiencing,
diminishing circles of trust.
Who can I really talk to
about these issues?
Who are my people?
Who can I be myself around?
Who can I not tiptoe around?
Who…
What can I say around whom
without fear
of some sort of blowback?
Diminishing circles of trust.
It's because the political gospel,
for many of us,
has taken root.
And Paul's very clear
about who's behind all of this.
In verse 3 he says,
but I'm afraid that
as the serpent deceived Eve
by his cunning,
your thoughts will be led astray
from a sincere
and pure devotion to Christ.
And then he says
in verses 14 and 15,
even Satan disguises himself
as an angel of light.
So it is no surprise
if his servants
also disguise themselves
as servants of righteousness.
Here's what Paul's saying.
This kind of deception
has been happening
since the very beginning of time.
When the serpent first said to Eve,
did God really say?
This is the insidious power
behind truthy gospels.
Why does it matter?
Because we're not standing
on neutral ground.
This is contested territory.
There is one gospel
that makes freedom possible.
All other gospels
return us to chains,
return us to slavery.
Stephen Colbert may have coined
the term truthiness,
but Satan invented it
a long time ago.
Right?
So that's the problem,
is that there are
truthy versions of the gospel,
truthy Christianity,
biblical truthiness.
It's out there.
It's everywhere.
Most of us have a very hard time
telling the difference
between the true gospel
and a truthy version
of the gospel.
And the stakes are very high.
Our relationship with God
is at stake.
Right?
Our ability to hear
and accept the true gospel
without being inoculated
against it is at stake.
And there is actually
spiritual power,
malevolent spiritual power,
behind all of this.
The stakes are very high.
So what can be done?
How do we respond
to this issue
in our own church?
Well, if you look at Jesus,
after His baptism,
Jesus goes into the wilderness.
And Satan comes
to Jesus in the wilderness
and begins to tempt Him.
We know about three things,
three attempts,
but it could have been
many more than that.
And of course,
the purpose of the temptation
is to convince Jesus
one way or another
to forsake His identity
and to forsake His purpose
in the world.
By the way,
it's the exact same reason
that Satan first tempted
Eve and Adam in the garden,
to convince them
one way or another
to forsake their identity
and purpose in the world.
And Satan had succeeded
in doing this
with Adam and Eve
using truthiness.
Did God really say?
And so he tries
the same tactics
with Jesus.
He actually tries
to twist God's words.
He uses Scripture.
He uses proof texts.
But he takes these verses
out of context.
Psalm 91, for instance,
he takes it out of context
and he applies it
in twisted ways
that align with his agenda
rather than with
what God is actually saying.
And by the way,
this is just a great time
to point out proof texting.
And by that,
I mean making a claim
and then quoting
one or two verses
to back that claim up.
That allows truthy Gospels
to spread like wildfire.
But the good news
of the Gospel
is that where Adam and Eve failed,
Jesus actually succeeds.
And we say,
well, how does Jesus
refute this temptation?
How does he persevere
in his identity and mission?
And the answer is
he uses Scripture.
And you say,
well, isn't Jesus
the Word of God incarnate?
Isn't he the voice
in Scripture
that we're hearing?
Absolutely.
Jesus knew all Scripture.
Jesus also knew
how it all fits together,
and yet Jesus uses Scripture.
In fact,
you'd be hard-pressed
to find anywhere
where Jesus is doing
anything in his ministry
where he is not
quoting Scripture regularly.
He quotes Scripture
all of the time,
all the way up
until the moment of his death.
He chooses Scripture
to express himself.
And what this shows us
is the way that we need
to think about
the issue of truthy Gospels
and biblical truthiness
in the church.
we always need to allow Scripture
to interpret itself,
to interpret itself.
In other words,
we always need to interpret
Scripture in context.
And by that,
I don't just mean
the paragraphs around it.
I mean the larger context
of Scripture as a whole.
You know,
the amazing thing
about the Bible is,
on the one hand,
the Bible is not a book.
It is a library.
It was written
over thousands of years.
It was written
in many genres
from history to wisdom
to poetry.
It was written
in a variety of languages.
It was written
by as many as
40 different authors.
And yet it all fits together
to tell one story.
And that story
is what we mean
when we say the Gospel.
The whole story,
beginning with God's creation
of all things.
The fall in human sin
and rebellion.
God's redemption
of the world
through Jesus Christ,
His life, death,
and resurrection.
And then the eventual renewal
of all things.
The whole story,
soup to nuts,
from Genesis to Revelation.
That's what we have
in mind here.
Now, we can try
to summarize the Gospel.
You know,
I grew up with a summary
of the Gospel
that said the Gospel
is about salvation
by grace through faith.
Right?
We can summarize the Gospel.
Jesus died to save us
from our sin.
Repent and believe in Him.
These are summaries
of the Gospel.
That's the gist of it.
But you actually need
all of Scripture
from Genesis to Revelation
to really draw out
the meaning of the Gospel.
You need the whole story.
One of my favorite quotes
from Flannery O'Connor,
she says,
a story is a way
to say something
that can't be said
any other way.
And it takes every word
in the story
to say what the meaning is.
It takes every word
in Scripture
to tell what the meaning
of the Gospel is.
Every single word matters.
And the more we know
the story of Scripture,
the more it is
in our blood and bones,
the more we pray it
and speak it together
and speak it privately
and read it
and study it
and teach it to our kids,
the more it is in us
and forming us,
the more we develop
a kind of Gospel instinct.
You know,
one of my great
favorite illustrations
is the Chicago
Shakespeare Improv Company.
And they're known,
they're kind of famous
for their ability.
They will stand up
at the beginning of the night
and they'll ask
for a title
from the audience
and they give two
90-minute performances
every night
and they will say,
give us a title
and the audience
shouts out a title
and based on a title alone,
they will improv
a 90-minute Shakespearean play
done in a Shakespearean style.
And you say,
well, how in the world
could people pull that off
with no prior planning?
It is because
they devote themselves
to the study of Shakespeare.
They read it,
they mark it,
they learn it,
they inwardly digest it,
they marinate in Shakespeare
until they develop
a Shakespearean instinct
and they can speak
in a Shakespearean way
and they can recognize instantly
when they're reading something
that is of Shakespeare
and we need to have
the same approach
to Scripture.
We need to develop
a kind of gospel instinct
so that we are able
to speak in ways
that are shaped
and formed by the gospel
and recognize
when that has not happened.
Right?
This is what we see here
and this is how Jesus
is able to overcome
this temptation.
And of course,
the very essence of the gospel
is Jesus Christ Himself.
Right?
It's not about anything
that we do for Jesus.
But what Jesus has already done
and will do for us.
And so the last thing
I'll say about it is this.
If any version of the gospel
you hear
either adds to
what Jesus has done.
Right?
You've got to believe in Jesus
but you also need
to speak in tongues.
Or takes away
from what Jesus has done.
You don't need to really
worry about sin.
You just need to get
yourself together.
Pull yourself up
by your bootstraps.
If any gospel you hear
either adds to what Jesus
has done
or takes away
from what Jesus has done,
it's not the gospel.
You're hearing something else.
I'll close with one
of my favorite prayers
from our book of common prayer.
Amen.
Blessed Lord
who caused all
holy scriptures
to be written
for our learning,
grant us so to hear them,
read,
mark,
learn,
and inwardly digest them
that we may embrace
and ever hold fast
to the blessed hope
of everlasting life
which you have given us
in our Savior,
Jesus Christ,
who lives and reigns
with you
and the Holy Spirit,
one God,
forever and ever.
Amen.