Audio Transcript

On this Monday, we jump right into the deep end to talk about the pathway from orthodoxy to demon theology. It’s a heavy topic, one inspired by a text we find in Paul’s first epistle to Timothy.

Here’s the question, from a podcast listener named Leland: “Hello, Pastor John, and thank you for taking heavy questions on the podcast. I have one of my own.” Indeed, he does. “In 1 Timothy 4:1, Paul writes that some professing Christians ‘will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons.’ This seems like a very stark transition for once-professing believers. What does this look like? Can it really mean Christ-worshipers become blatant demon-worshipers? Or is this move far more subtle? Can you explain to me what’s happening in this text?”

This is a good question for giving us an opportunity to clarify two things. First, can a true, born-again worshiper of Jesus be led astray into the kind of demonic deception that Paul has in mind? Second, how does this happen? What’s going on here? Does the departure from the church into involvement with demonic teaching happen suddenly or gradually?

Now, the reason I raised that first question is because Leland’s question for me has an ambiguity in it. On the one hand, he refers to “professing Christians departing from the faith to demons.” On the other hand, he asked the question about Christ-worshipers departing into demon worship. It wasn’t clear to me whether he was asking about genuine Christ-worshipers or whether he was asking about professing Christians who are not genuine Christ-worshipers deep down in their hearts.

I think Romans 8:30 teaches that those who are predestined are called, and those who are called are justified, and those who are justified are glorified, so that no genuinely called and justified Christian ever falls away into demon worship — not permanently, anyway. So then, the question becomes (and I think this is what he’s asking), What is happening when people in the church, who have been in the church for years and are outwardly identifying as Christian and yet are not truly born again, are swept away into the teaching of demons?

Lured by Lies

Let me read the text that he’s referring to.

Now, the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to [or paying attention to] deceitful spirits and teachings of demons, through the insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared, who forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. (1 Timothy 4:1–3)

What’s going on here? Well, first, Paul says, “There are deceitful spirits.” They would be manifesting themselves through people who claim to speak in the name of some supernatural being — in some charismatic way, perhaps, with a spirit of prophecy. This is the kind of thing John was referring to when he said, “Do not believe every spirit” — that’s what Paul is talking about here, deceitful spirits — “but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world” (1 John 4:1). So Paul is concerned that professing Christians will pay too much attention to deceitful spirits and not test them with biblical truth and be carried away into the teaching of demons.

Then he says that, through these spirits, there arise cult-like practices that contradict biblical teaching but look religious. In this case, he’s talking about forbidding marriage and forbidding certain foods. Then he says that these cultic practices have advocates whose consciences are seared and who lie about what the Bible teaches and deceive people away from teaching the truth and away from living by faith in Christ. When that happens, he says, “You can see that these are teachings of demons because that’s what the goal of demons is: to lure people away from Christ.”

Increasing Deception

Paul points out that this kind of departure from the faith will be intensified in the later times (1 Timothy 4:1). The danger of seduction by deceitful spirits and teachings of demons is always present throughout this fallen age, from the time of Jesus until Jesus comes back. They’re always there. But there will be a greater temptation as the end of the age approaches and the Lord draws near.

“The danger of seduction by deceitful spirits and teachings of demons is always present throughout this fallen age.”

Paul describes this in 2 Thessalonians 2. The people are worried that the day of the Lord may have come, and Paul says, “No, it hasn’t come, because first there has to be this great apostasy, this falling away, this rebellion, this deception.” A great deception comes first. “Let no one deceive you in any way. For that day will not come, unless the [apostasy] comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction” (2 Thessalonians 2:3). Then he says in 2 Thessalonians 2:7, “The mystery of lawlessness is already at work.” In other words, even though there will be a great deception of lawlessness at the very end of the age, the spirit of deception is always at work in some measure in this fallen age.

He describes it like this: “The coming of the lawless one is by the activity of Satan with all power and false signs and wonders, and with all wicked deception” — that’s what Paul is talking about in 1 Timothy — “for those who are perishing, because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. Therefore God sends them a strong delusion, so that they may believe what is false, in order that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness” (2 Thessalonians 2:9–12).

Jesus said in Matthew 24:12–13, “Because lawlessness” — the same lawlessness Paul’s talking about in 2 Thessalonians — “will be increased, the love of many will grow cold. But the one who endures to the end will be saved.”

Slow or Sudden Turn

In other words, the mystery of lawlessness will have a huge impact on nominal Christians, whose love for Christ is shallow and unreal. They will grow cold. Their resistance to the deception of demons will give way. They will not endure to the end.

This may happen gradually, as the church falls away from preaching the truth, and the people’s love for Christ becomes more and more perfunctory. You see this in churches. It’s tragic to watch. It just becomes perfunctory. They’re just going through the motions. All the former seeming passion and biblical faithfulness for Jesus is gone. Then come the deceitful spirits, and these folks are vulnerable to being swept away into a great deception and the teaching of demons.

“If we remain in the grace of God and treasure Christ above all, we will be kept.”

Or it may happen suddenly. A satanic miracle worker comes to town with a ministry of signs and wonders, like Simon in Acts 8. He takes people by storm because their roots are so shallow. They’re more dazzled by the deceitful miracles than by the beauties of Christ and his salvation and his teaching. Oh, the need for depth and rootedness in the truth in our churches. This is a word for pastors. This is why Paul urges us in Ephesians 6 to “put on the whole armor of God, that [we] may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil” and “keep alert with all perseverance,” praying earnestly to be spared this kind of deception (Ephesians 6:11, 18).

If we remain in the grace of God and treasure Christ above all, we will be kept. That’s 1 Peter 1:5. It’s so precious. I love this promise. I put it on my mother’s gravestone (with my father’s permission), in fact. “Kept by the power of God.” But here’s what the text says: “By God’s power [we] are being guarded [being kept] through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.” That’s our hope. Those whom the Lord calls, the Lord keeps.

If you could learn to preach from one man in particular, whom would you choose? Some may want to mention big names of today. Others may be entranced by great preachers of the past, the names that echo through history. Perhaps, closer to home, a dear mentor left a particular imprint upon us.

But what about the apostles, men full of the Holy Spirit, and their inspired sermons recorded in Scripture? Should we not learn from them first? In a delightful book called Peter: Eyewitness of His Majesty, my friend Ted Donnelly speaks of Peter as a disciple, as a preacher, and as a pastor. The book is a magnificent treatment of this servant of Christ. Some years before my friend himself passed into Christ’s presence, he preached on Acts 2 and identified some of the features of Peter’s preaching. I gladly acknowledge my debt in what follows.

What, then, can the record of apostolic preaching teach us? What lessons might we learn to help us declare the whole counsel of God? Turning to Peter’s sermon at Pentecost (Acts 2:14–40), let me suggest seven features of apostolic preaching that we can and should pursue.

Peter manifestly preaches in the here and now, beginning with the striking assertion about the disciples’ sobriety (Acts 2:15). Peter preaches an immediately relevant sermon as a man who knows where and when he speaks, and with whom. His sermon proceeds from a real person and is to, about, and for real people — those in Jerusalem who crucified the Lord of glory. He focuses on the most important matters — salvation from sin through faith in the Christ who died and rose. The sermon is earthy, preached by a dying man to dying men, yes, but also by a living man to living men, about the man who lived, died, and lives again forever.

Do we preach with the same sense of immediacy, with the same sense of reality? Do our messages seem like history lectures, or are people made to feel that this sermon pours from a present me to a present you?

2. Scriptural and Reasonable

Peter moves from explanation to exposition to application to persuasion. He takes account of his hearers’ experience, but he uses Scripture to interpret, explain, and confirm it (as in 2 Peter 1:19). Dealing with what his congregation knows, sees, and hears, he turns to Joel 2 to explain the work of the Spirit, to Psalm 16 to emphasize the reality of the resurrection, to Psalm 110 to connect the ascension of Christ with the grant of the Spirit.

Again and again, Peter makes the point, “This is that! That is what it says, and this is what it means.” He is preaching like Christ, employing what I call an apostolic hermeneutic, which Christ patterned for his disciples in Luke 24:27 and 44–48. Does our preaching rest in and rely upon the word of God? Are we manifestly proclaimers and explainers of divine truth, and chiefly of Christ as he is set forth in all the Scriptures?

3. Doctrinal and Instructive

I doubt anyone has ever been asked to preach a distinctly Trinitarian sermon, blending the richest insights of biblical and systematic theology, and covering such topics as theology proper, Christology, pneumatology, prolegomena, anthropology, soteriology, sacramentology, eschatology, and ecclesiology. You might consider such a request ridiculous or even impossible. Yet I suggest that Peter manages it here!

All these notes resonate and combine at Pentecost. Peter introduces all of them naturally, accessibly, substantially, and forcefully — sermonically! Peter is a true theologian, and his sermon is the fruit of Christ’s instruction and the Spirit’s illumination. But he is also a true preacher: though well taught, he doesn’t feel the need to parade his learning. He is neither entertaining the goats nor straining the giraffes. He is calling and feeding the sheep, and therefore he both knows and shows his theology appropriately. His scholarship is not lofty and academic, but consecrated to save and sustain souls through the plainest of declarations.

Are we preaching meaty or milky sermons, according to the needs of our hearers? Good preaching sets forth doctrine sometimes centrally, sometimes incidentally, so that the truth comes across as deep, clear, and sweet to the congregation.

4. Christian and Adoring

Peter’s sermon is theologically rich, but it zeroes in on the Lord Jesus Christ. Peter’s sermons, like Paul’s and others recorded in the New Testament, are full of the Lord Jesus, overflowing with precious truth concerning him. The Pentecost sermon is ardently and urgently Christ-centered, Christ-focused, Christ-exalting. The prophets spoke of him; God sent him; we trust him. He who is God the Son is also identified as true man, the promised man, the sent man, the crucified man, the risen man, the ascended man, the exalted man, the gracious man, the saving man.

“Have we preached, will we preach, a gospel that is whole and holy, free and full, sweet and saving?”

Remember, Peter is preaching to people who knew the Old Testament and among whom Jesus of Nazareth had physically walked. If they needed such instruction, how much more do hearers today? People do not know, or even know about, Jesus of Nazareth. They need men who are urgent and ardent to tell them of the Savior. Are we as preachers going out to tell people about Jesus Christ? Are we eager for people to hear of him, or do we not believe that the preaching of Christ will prove God’s means of bringing sinners to faith?

5. Applied and Direct

“Men and brothers,” said Peter, “Let me speak freely . . .” (Acts 2:29 NKJV). And he meant it! Read through the sermon again. Peter is plain, open, bold, and courageous. He looks his congregation in the eye and speaks to them. He speaks with startling bluntness: “This Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. . . . Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified” (Acts 2:23, 36).

This is not hectoring speech; nor is it unrighteously aggressive. We should expect the word of God to dig, to press, to probe, to trouble the soul, to cut to the heart. When the Spirit brings it home, hearers cry out, “What shall we do?” (Acts 2:37). The seraphic Samuel Pearce pleaded,

Give me the preacher who opens the folds of my heart; who accuses me, convicts me, and condemns me before God; who loves my soul too well to suffer me to go on in sin, unreproved, through fear of giving me offence; who draws the line with accuracy, between the delusions of fancy, and the impressions of grace; who pursues me from one hiding place to another, until I am driven from every refuge of lies; who gives me no rest until he sees me, with unfeigned penitence, trembling at the feet of Jesus; and then, and not till then, soothes my anguish, wipes away my tears, and comforts me with the cordials of grace.

Do we expect such preaching? If necessary, will we seek it out? Do we as preachers express truth directly, or do we fudge and shave, blunting the edge of the Jerusalem blade? Do we expect and desire our preaching to provoke the question, “What shall we do?” or have we become experts in turning aside the thrust of divine truth?

6. Affectionate and Gracious

Peter’s most direct speech does not lack love. He speaks to them and toward them, for them (Acts 2:14, 21–22, 29, 38–39). He holds back neither the horror of sin nor the hope of salvation. These last days are gospel days! The good news is being proclaimed to all: repent and believe in Christ, and you shall be saved. (Matthew Henry delightfully calls this offer “a plank after shipwreck.”) Then be baptized, identifying yourself with the Jesus of Scripture, the Christ from Nazareth. Forgiveness will be granted, and the Holy Spirit, who is God himself, will dwell in you to purify you, to bless you, to keep you.

Do we know how to combine the straight and the sweet? Have we learned, under God, to wound and to bind up? Do we know and love the people before us and around us, and so speak? Have we preached, will we preach, a gospel that is whole and holy, free and full, sweet and saving? Have we received the Jesus who brings salvation, and do we delight to tell others of him?

7. Blessed and Fruitful

Peter’s sermon strikes home hard and deep. Those cut to the heart cry out, “Brothers, what shall we do?” And soon after, “those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls” (Acts 2:37, 41). Solemnity and scorn gave way to serious concern, and the Lord granted salvation to thousands. This sermon, preached by a man full of the Holy Spirit, instructed by the Savior and illuminated by the Helper, is a carrying out of the Great Commission. As Peter obeys the command of Christ, three thousand receive the word, are baptized, and so are added to the number of the believers (perhaps more than Christ saw in all the days of humiliation, if we so read John 14:12).

Do we not have the same gospel? Do we not have the same Savior? Do we not have the same Spirit? Can we not preach similar sermons? Can we not pray for and expect similar results? I mean not so much the great numbers (though neither do I dismiss them), but rather the same spiritual reality and heavenly force?

Here is a model for truly apostolic preaching, an example for those who follow in the faith and labor of the apostles. We are not apostles, but we can desire more of the apostolic spirit. In that sense, we can and should seek to preach apostolic sermons, not as cold constructs according to some dry standard, but as the products of burning hearts taken up with Christ and desiring, above all things, the glory of God in him, and the eternal good of all those who hear.

When we give someone our full attention — our patient, focused, self-forgetful gaze — we look a little like God. The glory of God consists partly in the fact that he, unlike the gods of wood and stone, pays attention to his people (1 Kings 18:29; 2 Chronicles 7:15; Psalm 34:15). No distraction averts his gaze; no interruption snaps his focus. The true God is a perfectly attentive God — and when we offer our full attention to others, we look a little like him.

At the same time, of course, our attention is amazingly unlike God’s. God can give his full focus ten trillion places at once; we must choose one among the trillions. God’s sight can range through all space and time; our two little forward-facing eyes frame our sight here and now. God can walk through the million-acre orchard of life and see every piece of fruit; we must stop before this tree, this branch, this apple.

Which means human attention is one of the most precious gifts we have to give. By it, we offer another creature the dignity of our loving regard. We humble ourselves to know and be known. We invite someone or something to stamp us, even for just a moment, with their unique, surprising existence.

And perhaps never more so than in an age like ours, when human attention is an endangered species.

Lessons for Stewarding Attention

Over half a century ago, the great Martyn Lloyd-Jones groaned,

The world and the organizations of life around and about us make things almost impossible; the most difficult thing in life is to order your own life and to manage it. . . . There are so many things that distract us. . . . Every one of us is fighting for his life at the present time, fighting to possess and master and live our own life. (Spiritual Depression, 209)

There are so many things that distract us. Lloyd-Jones had distractions like the morning newspaper in mind. What would he say of a society where most live with a newspaper-television-camera-telephone-radio-mailbox strapped to our hand? We are all fighting for our lives — and whether we realize it or not, fighting for our attention, fighting to possess and master and give our attention, rather than having it taken from us.

And fight is the right word, for the stakes are high. We cannot follow Jesus without giving him our attention (Mark 4:24; Hebrews 2:1). We cannot become like Jesus without attentively beholding him (2 Corinthians 3:18; Hebrews 12:1–3). And we cannot love like Jesus without offering others our unhurried, undistracted, calm, attentive regard.

How then can we steward our limited, precious, endangered attention? In short, by living as humans made in the image of God, rather than as gods made in the image of the Internet.

Simplify your inputs.

If you’re like most people in the digital age, you take in far too much information every day — at least, far too much information to process, much less store as long-term knowledge. You wake up every morning subtly tempted to attend to the world as God does. And as always, those who reach for deity forfeit their humanity: by trying to give our attention everywhere, we weaken our ability to give it meaningfully anywhere.

“By trying to give our attention everywhere, we weaken our ability to give it meaningfully anywhere.”

We could look for support from neuroscience, which assures us that an abundance of information, especially the kind shot at us from the Internet’s hundred firehoses, impoverishes memory and addicts us to distraction. In his landmark 2010 book The Shallows, for example, Nicholas Carr writes, “The influx of competing messages that we receive whenever we go online not only overloads our working memory; it makes it much harder for our frontal lobes to concentrate our attention on any one thing” (194).

But neuroscience only confirms the anthropology we find in Scripture. Humans are far more tree-like than computer-like: information becomes knowledge and wisdom only as fast as water becomes fruit on the branch. Water cannot travel into roots and up trunks and through limbs in a moment; it takes time, and often requires the painfully slow process of meditation (Psalm 1:3). An abundance of information processed rapidly makes for distracted, superficial souls; a limited amount of information processed slowly makes for knowledge and that increasingly rare quality so lauded in Scripture: wisdom.

Consider, then, simplifying your inputs. Read less, but read better. Learn less, but learn better. Listen to less, but listen better. You cannot eat all the apples in life’s information orchard; you would be foolish to try. So make peace with your gloriously limited humanity, and learn to choose and savor just a few.

Prioritize near over far.

For most of history, humans had no choice but to give their attention to those people and things that lay near at hand. Adam and Eve not only did not know what was happening outside Eden; they could not know. There was no Ancient Near East Times back then. So, what could they do but spend their waking hours devoted to what they could see?

Today, we are just as limited as our first parents, with just as many hours in the day and just as much capacity for focus, but with billions more objects vying for our attention. We no longer need concern ourselves with people who can talk back or with the sensory world. We can spend all our time on the digital side of the globe.

Such availability, however, has not fundamentally changed our responsibility. Though we can know nowadays about matters far beyond the garden called home, God still holds us responsible, first and foremost, for how well we love, care for, and attend to those people and callings within arm’s reach.

What was once an inevitable fact of creaturely life now needs stating: proximity heightens responsibility. The Ephesians were to care for the whole church’s households, but especially for their own (1 Timothy 5:8). The Galatians were to do good to all, but especially to fellow believers (Galatians 6:10). Israel fell under judgment, not for neglecting Edom’s poor, but the poor within their own gates (Amos 8:4–6).

“What was once an inevitable fact of creaturely life now needs stating: proximity heightens responsibility.”

And if you are a normal, busy person, your nearest circles likely need all the attention you can give. Few of us can attend well to spouse and children, church members and neighbors, while also attending well to digital controversies, international news, and high-school friends’ Instagram posts. Something must give, and we need not feel guilty for prioritizing the near over the far.

Don’t just see, but notice.

The muscle of attention strengthens or atrophies, in part, during everyday, ordinary moments. What do you do when you arrive somewhere five minutes early, or when you wait in line at the grocery store? Like so many, I find myself reaching for my shiny pocket rectangle, that beloved window into distant realms. But this window is also a shutter, closing my eyes to the realm right in front of me.

Creation has grown dim to many. We see without seeing and hear without hearing. The world’s ecstasies have become a background hum; the color spectrum has turned to shades of gray. We have grown unrighteously unlike the God of Psalm 104, that Wonderer who never grows weary of gushing springs and valley beasts, branched birds and growing grass, schools of fish and the hidden deeps (Psalm 104:10–11, 12, 14, 25–26).

We have also become unlike the attentive Jesus, that Psalm-104 God made flesh. He had a way of noticing what others only saw, didn’t he? The disciples saw some birds and flowers; he noticed God’s fatherly hand (Luke 6:22–31). The crowds saw seeds and yeast; he noticed the coming kingdom (Matthew 13:31–33). The multitudes saw a blind beggar; Jesus noticed Bartimaeus himself, in all his desperate need (Mark 10:46–52).

In Jane Austen’s Emma, as the heroine finds herself waiting at a storefront with only a dull street outside, the narrator tells us, “A mind lively and at ease, can do with seeing nothing, and can see nothing that does not answer” (174). Yes, a mind lively and at ease — a mind attentive — need not reach compulsively for the pocket. It can do with seeing what seems like nothing, because in that “nothing” is the handiwork of God, ready to answer our gaze. Do you notice?

Live in the attention of God.

Scripture’s charge to “pay attention” almost always includes God or his words as the object. So, he calls his people to pay attention to “all that I have said to you” (Exodus 23:13), “my words” (Jeremiah 6:19), “the prophetic word” (2 Peter 1:19), or simply, “me” (Isaiah 51:4). Yet when we give him our attention, we find that he has already given us his (Psalm 34:15).

Perhaps many need a Hagar moment, a moment of waking up to the presence of El-Roi, the God who sees us (Genesis 16:13) — and in Christ, the God who sees us graciously, ever and always. We do not find, when we look to him, a God who gives us half his attention, or half of himself, but all: his full gaze, under his full grace, now and for endless ages.

Nothing so shapes our attention like living — daily, adoringly — in the loving attention of God. Turn your eyes upon him at first rising, and see his eyes turned to you. Speak to him in the day’s lulls, and find his ear open. Return to him before shutting your attention off for the night, and then lie down knowing his will not.