“I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel— not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ.” (Galatians 1:6–7, ESV)
During my days of ministry, I noticed something. On occasion professing believers would depart fellowships and switch to others with strange teachings. While these were normally the neophytes, that is those who were young in the faith, it was not always the case.
These would hear a flashy speaker who had a good following and be drawn to him. Yet the teaching they received would waver from the truth. There were a variety of false teachings, but they all had one core problem. The teachings did not align with the Bible. Some of the departures were gross and some only slight variations. Yet gross or slight they were still teachings that were incorrect and thus dangerous.
Sometimes you could look at the teacher’s organization’s statement of faith and see the problem, but not always. Sometimes the statements of faith were so vague that it was only by listening to their teaching that you could discover the error. Yet herein lies the problem.
When I entered the pastorate, I discovered that most believers lacked a sufficient theological basis to scrutinize their teaching. This was not just a problem for the new believers but also many who had been in the faith for many years. Several things characterized these. First, they generally believed what they did because some preacher or teacher told them what to believe. If you asked them to expand upon what they believed and why they held to those beliefs, they would say, “Because the pastor said so.” It used to drive me crazy when I would over hear in theological discussions, “Steve said . . . ” or The commentator said . . .” this or that.
The problem with this was that these people based their core beliefs on what other people had said and not what was written in the Bible.
When I taught Systematic Theology in a seminary extension years ago, I would begin the first lecture by showing the students the textbook. I would state, “Here is your text book for the course. It is a good textbook.” Then I would hold up the Bible and ask them of the two books, which one was infallible. The answer was clear. It was the Bible. In fact, it was the Bible as penned by the original authors in their original languages. The point was that the only source of infallible theology was the word of God.
What we drastically lack in the church are believers who not only believe something but who also know what the Bible teaches on these core beliefs.
The second great problem is that while professing believers may not know what the Bible states about what they believe, they do not take make the effort to search the Scriptures for understanding. They are just happy to be fed theological information and take it verbatim. I have discovered that many believers have never even read the Bible through from cover to cover even one time much less studied it.
Believers should be like the Bereans. The book of Acts records their heart and understanding.
“Now these Jews were more noble than those in Thessalonica; they received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so.” (Acts 17:11, ESV)
They examined Paul’s teaching to make certain that it was the truth as written in the Scriptures, the word of God. These Jews could have said, “Well our teachers tell us this, so this is what we believe.” But no, they sought out the truth from God’s word.
Believers today need to have the same heart. Moreover, believers today need to be grounded in the word of God and base their core beliefs on what the Bible says. Only then will they be able to resist the false teachings of our age.
Renewing the Heart 