"Why False Teachers Mock the Truth, Part 1" Excerpts

Here is much of the article from "Why False Teachers Mock the Truth, Part One," by John MacArthur which can be found in it's entirety at: www.gty.org/Resources/Sermons/42-209.

One of the real paradoxes of religion is this: that those who are the greatest enemies of God are those who are the most religious. One would assume that the more religious you are the closer to God you are; the more religious you are the more favorable to God you are; the more religious you are the more God would approve of you. But just the opposite is true. The archenemy of God is false religion. The most vile and violent enemies of God are those who reject His truth and substitute anything else. Those who will suffer the severest eternal punishment are those who have rejected the truth and embraced a false religion.

In fact the most overt and aggressive mockers of God and of Christ are religious. Anyone who denies the gospel and the God of Scripture and the Christ of Scripture is the archenemy of God and has taken his place with Satan in the propagation of false religions for the purpose of attacking God and the advance of His kingdom. It is an ironic reality that those who are the recognized representatives of God are actually filled with the greatest contempt for God and will receive from God the severest judgment. False religion and false teachers stand at the head of the parade of the anti-God force in this world. They are victims and participants in systems of religion designed by Satan who is disguised as an angel of light and who is aided and abetted by demons who seduce people with damning doctrine, religion then that people propagate for purposes of Satan and not at all for the purposes of God. Sad to say, but true, that the religious leaders of Israel fit into this category.

Well the Pharisees came to the conclusion that it was they who were speaking the truth and it was Jesus who was the imposter. It was Jesus who was against the law, who was relaxing the law, who was, in a sense, defaming the law, depreciating and diminishing the law by spending His time with lawbreakers such as sinners and tax collectors. They had come to that conclusion and it was not time to get the people on board with their conclusion, and so openly, for example earlier in the gospel of Luke, people would say, "He does what He does by the power of Satan." They didn't want to keep it in, they wanted to shout it so that everybody who was inclined to be attracted to toward Jesus would understand that this was a horrific decision to make and a shameful thing because Jesus was satanic.

In Chapter 15, they grumbled, the murmured, they complained out loud, "This man receives sinners and eats with them." Come on to our side. We are the true interpreters of the law of God. We speak for God. Look at the associations of this man. We don't associate with those kinds of people. Their grumbling in Chapter 15, by the time we get to Chapter 16 verse 14, it's escalated to scoffing. Scoffing, this is serious stuff. This is now mockery. They're no longer just complaining. They're no longer saying He's satanic. It's turned into a sneer. It's turned into a mocking expression of distain, disgust, and hatred toward Jesus. The verb ekmukterizobasically means in the literal sense to turn up your nose at someone, to treat them as with disdain, strong contempt.

This is an attitude. It is an attitude of mockery, of scorn, of repudiation in the most severe degree. It is a kind of vile hatred that is diminishing and degrading of Jesus. In fact, this becomes the pattern for them in Chapter 23 of Luke, when you get to the foot of the cross and Jesus is being crucified in verse 35 it says, "Even the rulers were sneering at Him," the only other time in the New Testament the same word is used.

So this lifting up their nose and treating Jesus with mocking scorn and sneering, disdain and public disgust is now going to be the pattern. They've worked through all the other things and they've reached this point where they just openly incessantly deride and mock Him. And they do it publicly for the purpose of deterring anyone who might regard Him as the Messiah or might regard Him as a prophet from God or might believe that He is, in fact, the true interpreter of God's law.

Our Lord's archenemies then, our Lord's most hostile antagonists are the self-appointed guardians of the true religion of Judaism. Mark it down folks; false religion is always the most severe hater of God, always. They denounce Jesus publicly because they reject what He is and what He says, and all false religion that will not accept the true saving gospel of Jesus Christ does exactly the same thing. They may not do it publicly, they may not do it openly, most of them will if you press the issue of the true gospel and true Christianity against a false religionist, they will finally come to the place where they will treat the truth with scorn. But whether they do or not, anybody who takes the position that does not acknowledge the truth of Jesus Christ and the gospel is the enemy of God. And as a purveyor of false religion becomes the archenemy of God because as is said of the Pharisees, "Not only are you sons of hell," Matthew 23, "but everybody you convert becomes twice the son of hell that you are." Who would have ever thought that the Pharisees the guardians of Old Testament truth, they thought, the gate keepers of Judaism, the representatives of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who would have thought that they would be not sons of God, not sons of the kingdom, not sons of heaven, but called by Jesus sons of hell?

Jesus is not relaxing the law as they (Pharisees) accused Him of. Jesus is not inventing some new religion as they accused Him of. He is not condoning sin and sinners as they said He did. He was upholding the law, clarifying the law, restating the law, reaffirming the law, if anything expanding the law, as He did in the Sermon on the Mount when He said this: "But I say unto you," and he made the law even more stringent and more demanding than the Pharisees were ever willing to make it. They were reductionists of the law. They had to reduce the law because they had to be able to keep it to earn their salvation and so they had to twist it and turn it into something that was manageable.

And by the way, even today evangelicals want to embrace, many evangelicals under that rubric want to embrace everybody who believes anything and nothing and something and throw their arms around whoever, whatever view, if you're just willing to talk about Jesus at all we'll get you in, and even if you never heard of Jesus we'll get you in somehow. We're all going to be in there. That's sort of the mindset now. We don't want to be divisive. The only way your can perpetrate that, see the only way you can perpetuate that, the only way you can make that sort of unity work is to never say anything that offends all the people who are outside the truth, because if you start speaking the truth in that context they're going to sneer at you, they're going to mock and they're going to scorn.

But Jesus goes right to the core of this issue and obviously will not tolerate anything other than the truth and does not wish us to either, and so He uncovers the motives for people in false religion. And I'm going to give you some today and next time in this text. Number one: why do people scoff at the truth, why do people sneer at the truth, why do they reject the truth? Well very clearly here the first thing we can say about it is that it's against the inclinations of their own heart. It's against the inclinations of their own heart. Clearly, look at it.

"Now the Pharisees who were lovers of money were listening to all these things and were scoffing at Him." Actually the Greek structure in the verse is set up a little differently. The verse begins this way: now listening to all these things were the Pharisees who were lovers of money and they were scoffing at Him.

Now the Pharisees are characterized here as, it's an interesting word, philar-garoi, two words, lovers of money from phileo, to have affection for. They were money lovers. Actually the word is silver; they were silver lovers. Everything was coinage. They didn't have any paper money in those days. They were lovers of coins. They were motivated by greed. They were motivated by avarice. That's why Judas became an apostle, a disciple. He got in because he wanted money and when he was one of the disciples he manipulated himself to get into the place where he became the treasurer and he held the bag and then he was beginning to become very concerned when money was going out of the bag and he made a point of that, you remember. And he only made the point, it says, because he held the bag and he was depleting his potential income down the road. He was in it because he thought Jesus would bring the kingdom and he would be wealthy and rich and prominent in it. It's pretty typical. He was moved by avarice. All false teachers function like that. They operate thinking that godliness is a means of great gain, I Timothy 6:5-6. They think that religion will make them rich or maybe not filthy rich, but religion is a good way to make them comfortable. Religion will provide their money. You get into it, you use people, you abuse people in order to satisfy your own needs to meet your own needs. This is absolutely typical of false teachers. That is why anyone who is to serve in spiritual leadership is warned against it.

In II Timothy 3:2, "Men will be lovers of self, lovers of money." It goes with being fallen. You're going to want what you want to satisfy your own needs and your own comforts. Opposed to that if you're going to be an elder or a spiritual leader in the church, I Timothy 3:3, "You must be free from the love of money." Titus 1:7, "You must be free from the love of money." I Peter 5:2, "You must not minister for sorted gain." Jude 16, the same thing. You don't do what you do in order to take financial advantage of people. This is a corrupt motive that was characteristic of the Pharisees. And there it is, they were lovers of money. They were in it for money. They mean their motives were impure. It wasn't for God; it wasn't even for the welfare and the benefit of people, they were dishonorable, they were not to be trusted, they only pretended to love God, they only pretended to love people, they were in it to get what they could get out of it. They were devourers of people. They were devourers of widow's houses. They took advantage of the poor. They only gave as a dramatic show, not sacrificially, not out of their own heart.

So the Lord was teaching things they didn't want to hear. And the response is ridicule, the response is scorn, the response is an all out attack on the truth. This is a very important principle, folks, mark it, you can always mark it. Anytime you see an aggressive reaction to what the word of God demands, you know you're dealing with false people, because they have no receptivity to the truth. They have no capacity. They are blind, they are dead, "The natural man understands not the things of God, I Corinthians 2:14, he can't know them, he can't understand them, even the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness. It is an offense to them, it is a stumbling block to them, to preach the word of the living God, to preach the truth it offends them.

In John Chapter 3, for example, is the best and most core illustration of this. In John Chapter 3, Jesus says very simply, "Light has come into the world," verse 19, "and men love the darkness rather than the light for their deeds were evil. Everyone does evil hates the light, doesn't come to the light lest his deeds should be exposed. But He who practices the truth comes to the light that his deeds may be manifest as having been wrought of God." Somebody who belongs to God, somebody who has the life of God in them, someone whose truly God's is going to hear the truth, embrace the truth, love the truth, run to the truth and when you preach the truth and it raises hostility and anger and animosity, you know you have just brought the light shining on the darkness and you've got a bug looking for a rock to crawl under to get away from the light.

Very religious, but when the light went on they hated the light because their deeds are evil. They resent it. That's false religion. That's why, as I said, the only way you can make an alliance with people who have false gospels and false religions, the only way you can find a way to get along with them is to make sure that the light is turned off. You just dim the revelation of God. They didn't want to accept what Jesus said. They weren't allowing that conviction to do its work in their hearts. They had no interest in using their money for purposes that Jesus brought to their attention. The simple principle is false teachers have no ability to respond to the word of the Lord, they're antagonistic to the truth.

So the bottom line is this: look there is no way to be faithful to the truth without generating antagonism. You don't try to do that, that's not your objective, but until that antagonism is confronted there cannot ever be repentance. This is simply a biblical principle that is crystal clear in the text of Scripture.

Just a few illustrations: Go back to Luke 6 because it's so important. Luke 6:47, well 46, because this sets it up. "Why do you call me Lord, Lord, and don't do what I say?" That is the question. Oh you say you're in the kingdom. You say God is your God. You say you believe in Jesus. Why do you call me Lord, Lord and don't do what I say? This is ludicrous. This is a false claim. This is meaningless.

Here's the point, verse 47, "Everyone who comes to Me and hears My words and does them, or acts on them, I'll show you what He's like. He's like a man building a house, dug deep, laid a foundation on the rock, when a flood rose, the torrent burst against that house, couldn't shake it because it had been well built. On the other hand, the one whose heard hasn't acted is like a man who built a house on the ground without any foundation. The torrent burst against it immediately collapsed and the ruin of the house was great.

The point is there's two kinds of religious house. There's a house that has a foundation and a house that doesn't and the foundation is hearing and obeying the word. The Jews had built a religious house but they rejected the word. They didn't' hear it, they didn't believe it, they didn't act on it and the torrent is judgment and when judgment comes their house of cards will collapse. It's all about who hears and acts, not just professors, but possessors, not just hearers, James says, but doers of the word.

But the point is their fear was that Jesus was going to do something that would cause them to lose what they wanted out of life, their independence, their freedom, their source of income, their prestige, their power, their position. Then later in Chapter 12, down toward the end of the Chapter, it couldn't be more clear in the final section of John 12:47, "If anyone hears My sayings and doesn't keep them I don't judge him; I didn't come into the world to judge the world, but to save the world. He who rejects Me, and doesn't receive My sayings, has one who judges him; the word I spoke is what will judge him at the last day." When sinners go before the final judgment, stand before God what's going to judge them is whether or not they believed everything Jesus said. There's absolutely no way around this, there's no commendation of the Jews ever by Jesus, apart from believing in Him there is no salvation.

I John 2:3, "By this we know we've come to know Him if we keep His commandments. Whoever keeps His word in him the love of God has been perfected." Someone says I've come to know Him and doesn't keep His commandments he is a liar. He's a liar. False teachers have corrupt motives and are antagonistic toward the truth. You can spot them on the basis of those kind of things.

Thirdly, it is also true of people in false religion that they are self-justifying, self-justifying. Look at verse 15. This is absolutely unmistakable and is really one of the great definitions of false religion. "You are those who justify yourselves." Now there's a hopeless situation. To justify, decio,or to make righteous; to make right. The idea is to make yourself right. "You are those who try to make yourselves right," to put another way to save yourselves, to earn your salvation. Pharisaic Judaism is a system of justification. Making your self-righteous by ritual and by maintaining certain standards and laws and ethical codes and tradition. Making yourself acceptable to God by your works, and of course we know enough about the Bible to know this is rejected wholesale.

The just shall live by faith the Old Testament says, that's repeated again and again in Romans 1:17, "The just shall live by faith," Romans 3, "By the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified, Chapter 4, "Abraham was not justified by works, but by faith." Same thing in Chapter 5: "For by grace are you saved by faith, Ephesians 2. We know this great truth no one can make himself right with God. That's the reigning deception in human culture. Well I think I'm going to heaven because I'm a good person, and I believe in God, and I believe in Jesus, and I try to do the best I can, and try to be a good person, and I'm sure I'm more good than bad. That's the typical scenario.

False religion, do we think of it as some kind of elevated thing, very religious, very elevated, the best of people living at a virtuous level, the high level, they've ascended above the hoy ploy, the riff raff, the scum of society. Jesus felt much more comfortable, much more at home hanging around sinners and tax collectors than He did around the Pharisees, why, because it wasn't the sinners and tax collectors who were the architects of the satanic opposition. It was the false religious leaders. Lovers of money with corrupt and impure motives antagonistic to the commands of God, hostile to the word of God, purveyors of a kind of self-righteous system where you make a contribution to your own salvation by your good works, and seekers of honor from people. That's what marked the Pharisees. And that's what set them in contrast to Jesus. They are outside the kingdom clearly.

There are only two possibilities: you either are in Christ because you accept the word of God concerning Christ and the work of Christ and you believe and you embrace that truth, or in any other religious form you are the enemy of God and the opposition to Jesus Christ and the true gospel. There is no middle ground and there's no truce that can be struck.