God-Speak or Made-Up Stories?

2 Peter 1:12 – 3:3

• what do you look for in a church? what leads you to a certain one?
• in Timothy, we saw false teachers teaching what people WANTED to hear (and would not be biblically correct)
  • so who is teaching you the right things?
• orthodoxy: straight teachings
• orthoproxy: straight practice

Important tips for knowing the difference between God-speak and man-made stuff…

1. look for confident commitment to the origin, authenticity and importance of the revealed words from God (2 Peter 1:4,16-21)
   • Emergent Evangelical churches = social liberalism
     • “I don’t know about Creation, Salvation, Hell, etc.”
     • work of devil is to deter us from confidence in God’s words (ie. Did God really say that?)
   • can’t have actions without knowledge of Christ and bible
   • so many afraid of Absolute, let alone ancient absolute
2. Look for interpretation of Scripture that is rarely novel and not privately derived (2 Peter 1:20-21)
   • prophecy not derived from one’s interpretations
3. Look for teaching that sets you free to serve God and be changed by Him, rather than being set loose to leave Him (2 Pet 2:1)
   • destructive heresies removing full trust in God (and places trust in self), removes sovereignty of Jesus
     • “lets remove all boundaries and just focus on Jesus; He’ll forgive me even if what I’m doing is wrong, right?”
   • who or what owns you? what dictates what you do?
4. Look to avoid teaching that sets you up for self-righteousness (2 Peter 2:2-3)
   • ie. Word of Faith movement??
   • greedy; want ownership of own lives
   • many intentionally sanitize the self-centeredness of pain relief so it can be the ultimate Christian quest because God has advertised his judgment in the past concerning these things (2 Peter 2:4-10)
5. look carefully at life of the teacher (2 Peter 2:11-19)
   • ultimately what you are is what you live