1 Kings 12:26–33
26 And Jeroboam said in his heart, “Now the kingdom will turn back to the house of David. 27 If this people go up to offer sacrifices in the temple of the Lord at Jerusalem, then the heart of this people will turn again to their lord, to Rehoboam king of Judah, and they will kill me and return to Rehoboam king of Judah.” 28 So the king took counsel and made two calves of gold. And he said to the people, “You have gone up to Jerusalem long enough. Behold your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt.” 29 And he set one in Bethel, and the other he put in Dan. 30 Then this thing became a sin, for the people went as far as Dan to be before one. 31 He also made temples on high places and appointed priests from among all the people, who were not of the Levites. 32 And Jeroboam appointed a feast on the fifteenth day of the eighth month like the feast that was in Judah, and he offered sacrifices on the altar. So he did in Bethel, sacrificing to the calves that he made. And he placed in Bethel the priests of the high places that he had made.33 He went up to the altar that he had made in Bethel on the fifteenth day in the eighth month, in the month that he had devised from his own heart. And he instituted a feast for the people of Israel and went up to the altar to make offerings.
Prayer: O Lord, save us from false teaching and false living. Let the truth of Your Word shine brightly so that we might find the comfort and forgiveness which Christ freely offers to us. Amen.
What Should Our Attitude Be Towards False Doctrine
I. Concerned for Error out of Love for Christ & Others
II. Since Our Comfort is in Christ & His Word Alone
In Christ Jesus, who wants us to find comfort and strength in him, dear fellow redeemed!
What does God want for your life? What does he want for you more than anything else? I Timothy 2:4 states, “[God] desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” What a great thing God wants for us! He wants us to be saved—which means he wants to rescue us from sin and hell by bringing us to heaven to live with him in perfect righteousness and holiness—where there is no sin or sadness, but joy and gladness! God wants what is good for us, which is why he redeemed our body and soul through Jesus’ holy life and innocent blood shed on the cross. He gives us the Word of God, the Bible, so that we might know this truth and believe in him and be saved. This is what God wants for you!
If we know what God wants for us, then we must take his warnings to heart. If he says something is bad for us, he means it. It’s no child’s play. It is serious business. In our Gospel lesson today, Jesus warns us about one of the greatest threats we are faced with as Christians. Jesus said, “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will recognize them by their fruits.” Jesus warns us of false prophets and tells us we will know them by their fruits. The fruit of a prophet is what they teach and preach. If someone teaches contrary to the Bible, the Lord wants us to mark and avoid them—they are a false prophet (Romans 16:17). They will not help us. They will not help others. They will at least damage the faith of their listeners and at worse lead some down a path to hell. Jesus wants us to treasure his Word because he loves us and wants us to be saved. So, he tells us, beware of false prophets and their false teachings.
In our lesson, we hear about the idolatrous worship that began under King Jeroboam. Who is Jeroboam? As you might recall, Solomon became king after his father David. While Solomon had God’s favor and was wisely leading his kingdom, he had been led astray by the false gods of his many wives. This did not please the Lord. The Lord told Solomon that he would remove his kingdom from him and give it to his servant. Yet, because of the promise the Lord made to David, he would let his descendants continue to rule the tribes of Judah and Benjamin through which the Savior would come. The man who became king of the ten northern tribes after Solomon’s death was Jeroboam. Solomon’s son, Rehoboam only ruled Judah and Benjamin.
Yet, as soon as Jeroboam became king of the ten northern tribes, he realized he had a big problem. Even though he built a new capital city in Shechem, the temple where all the twelve tribes went to worship was in Jerusalem. So, if his people went to Jerusalem, he was worried that they would eventually abandon him as their king and go back to following Rehoboam the king of Judah. To ensure that his people would remain loyal to him, he built his own temples in Bethel and Dan. He made two calves of gold and told the people that these were gods that had saved them from the land of Egypt. He set up his own priests and began his own festivals where they would offer sacrifices. It was this rejection of God and his word, this blatant idolatry, that would lead to the ruin of the northern kingdom by the Assyrians in 722 BC. The northern tribes did not listen to the Lord’s warnings. They ignored prophet after prophet, which eventually resulted in their own destruction.
It’s amazing and alarming how quickly the northern tribes turned away from God. It’s an important reminder about how false worship of God—whether that be through idolatry, false doctrine, or hypocrisy quickly dries up a faith once vibrant. The Israelites did not take God’s warning to heart—they thought that they would be able to worship God any way they wanted. They believed it would not hurt them. Yet, once you let a little bit of error stand, it only gets easier to let more in.
It reminds me of how parents change the more kids they have. When parents have their first child, they tend to be quite protective. If a child drops food on the ground, they won’t let them eat it. If their pacifier falls on the ground, they make sure to wash it before putting it back in their mouth. With the second child, the parents are still concerned, but if the floor is somewhat clean, they don’t mind the child eating cheerios off the ground. Now wiping a dirty pacifier on your shirt or burp cloth becomes the new “sanitary.” By the third child, all bets are off, and parents consider it good for their immune system.
This progression in parents is somewhat humorous and likely won’t affect the child at all. However, if parents went from protecting their children to suddenly letting them eat and drink whatever they wanted—whether that be fruit snacks to Tide Pods, or juice to Drano, that would be totally different. It wouldn’t be insignificant, but life threatening!
We obviously see the absurdness of saying a parent would let their child eat and drink anything. But for some reason, Christians have a hard time seeing that any false teaching or false prophet—can cause the same spiritual harm as Drano or Tide Pods can do to the body. Sometimes Christians can start to think that false teaching is as insignificant as letting a child eat cheerios off the ground—it might be dirty, but it won’t harm you. But this is not the case at all.
False doctrine is dangerous because it attacks Christ and his Word. Jeroboam believed that if they would simply offer sacrifices, they could make God happy. He believed it was just the outward performance of religious rites that would please God. Ultimately, he was practicing work righteousness—the idea that you can please God through your own merits and actions. Whether you are worshipping golden calves or trusting in your own works and efforts—you are worshipping someone other than Christ. It’s an attack on Jesus, because it is saying we don’t need him. I can do it myself.
In our day and age, while we do have different false religions, there are two great threats to our faith. The first is apathy towards false doctrine. Today, Christians, and especially Lutherans, struggle to hold firm to the pure, unadulterated Word of God. One of the most blatant examples is the allowance of female clergy. There were no woman pastors for almost two thousand years until the late 1960s. Now, it is common. But why does it matter if women are pastors? Can’t they preach good sermons too? The question is not about whether women can preach fine sermons—they most certainly could. It’s not about whether God loves men more than women. The question is whether or not God commands it. Scripture states, “Let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness. I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man” (I Timothy 2:11–12). Pastors are to be, “the husbands of one wife” (I Timothy 3:2). The Word of God has spoken to the subject. But the devil has been quite persuasive with the same lie he gave to Eve, “Did God really say?”
When I was leading a Bible Study for the WELS Campus Ministry during seminary this very topic came up. While the study was primarily made up of college students, there was an older woman in her eighties that would come too. After I had talked about it and gave the pertinent Bible passages, she said, “It’s obvious why there can’t be woman pastors!” I was a little shocked at her confidence. I asked why and she said, “Well, just look at every church body that has allowed it and how far away they have fallen from Scripture!”
This gets at an important point—as soon as you say that one part of the Bible isn’t true, then you can start to say that about any other part. Sadly, this has led the majority of Protestant and liberal Lutheran churches to even question things like the virgin birth of Jesus. The reason we care about true teachings and avoid false teachings is because we love Jesus. He said his Word is true. If we doubt the Bible, we are doubting Christ. We want the pure teachings of Scripture because it is only through the Word that we find our Savior.
The second great threat to our faith is the false teaching of hypocrisy. It’s to say one thing, but do another. We might say that we are to honor God’s Word, but then we live in such a way that dishonors him—whether that be through misuse or neglect of his Word, hatred towards others, or an obsession with the things of this world. Our attitude towards sin in our lives is often reflective of how a parents’ concern changes from their first to third child. The more we let sin go on in our lives, the more we become okay with it. The more we think it is no big deal. James warns against the hypocrisy we can have with our speech, “No human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison. With it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in the likeness of God. From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers, these things ought not to be so” (James 3:8–10).
When we think about our own lives, we know that we have often played the hypocrite. We have said God forbids certain sins and then gone headlong into our own. This is hypocrisy. We have all fallen short.
If we didn’t have God’s Word, then we would lose hope. We would think there was no chance after the things we have done or left undone. But we do have God’s Word. We have the comforting words of Jesus, “I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance” (Luke 5:32). He came for sinners—he came for parents who lose patience with their children, he came for children who disobey their parents, he came for gossipers, coveters, adulterers, and thieves. He came for sinners like you and me. He came to live the life that God wanted us to live. He lived perfectly from the womb to the tomb. He lived a perfect life to give it to us—to give us a perfect score. Then he went to the cross to pay for all our sins—everyone last one. “The blood of Jesus [God’s] Son cleanses us from all sin” (I John 1:7).
The Word of God gives us this great promise, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” God save us from hypocrisy and grant us humility! In Jesus, we have forgiveness, hope, and life. Jesus said, “Come to Me all you who labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest.”
You and I are blessed, because we have been given the Word God. We know what God wants for us. We know he wants us to be saved. We know that we are dearly loved by him. He gave his own Son for us. He promises to be with us always. This is our greatest comfort and treasure!
The reason God warns us of false doctrine and false living is because he loves us. The reason we love pure doctrine is because we love Jesus. What’s more, we want his Word faithfully taught, because we love others. We want others to know what God wants for them. We want this world to know of the great love of God for each person. May God grant us his grace so that the pure teachings of his Word might always be proclaimed from this pulpit and reflected in our living. When we are confronted with the true Word of God, we pray that he would change our hearts. There are a lot of things that change in this world, but our God does not—and what a comfort that is! “[God] desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” Amen!