Spiritual Defection

➡ This text is about a ministry called Your Daily Bread, which aims to strengthen people’s spiritual connection with Christ through daily devotions. The main discussion is about spiritual defection, which is turning away from God after understanding His revelation. The text emphasizes the pain God feels when people defect, using examples from both the Old and New Testaments. It concludes by warning that there will be many false followers of Jesus, and the importance of recognizing the characteristics of false discipleship.
➡ This text emphasizes the importance of distinguishing between true and false followers of Jesus. It suggests that many who claim to follow Christ may not truly know him, and that the path to true faith is narrow, with few finding it. The text encourages us to stay strong in our faith, shine our light in the world, and to visit goddessgovernment.com for daily devotions.

Hello, my name is Paul, and I am the voiceover for a ministry provided to you by Jim Pugh at God Is Government called Your Daily Bread, taken from Christ’s teaching of the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew 6, verse 11. This is a daily devotion ministry focused not only on uplifting Scripture, but Scripture that will grow your spiritual connection with Christ. We hope that you receive these devotions to uplift you, encourage you, but most importantly, advance your knowledge base of the Holy Scriptures. Today’s focused discussion will be on spiritual defection. The Bible makes a huge issue out of spiritual defection about having the revelation of God, understanding the revelation of God, and then turning your back and walking away from it.

And it’s not just the New Testament. That kind of issue is all over the Old Testament. In fact, that was painfully the agony of the prophets who were crying out to unfaithful Israel and unfaithful Judah repeatedly saying to them, you have backslidden, as Jeremiah puts it, or as Isaiah puts it, you have forsaken the Lord your God, you have walked away. That is a repeated issue in the Old Testament to which the prophets spoke. In fact, it wasn’t just Israel. For example, in Isaiah 16.9, God says to Moab, I will water you with my tears, my heart will sound like a harp.

That is God weeping over the disinterest of Moab in the truth concerning him to which they had been exposed. The sadness of God is played out in the melancholy plucking of a harp, and God weeps through Isaiah over Moab and Moab’s defection. Further in Isaiah 22, a little section in verses 12 to 14, where again God is weeping through the prophet, and it says, the Lord God calls for weeping and mourning and baldness and sackcloth, which were physical symbols of a broken heart. It isn’t just the theology of defection, it’s the pain of defection that grips God.

It’s not just the defection itself for its own sake, it’s the pain that God feels over that defection. In Isaiah 59.13, the people are indicted by the prophet because they have departed from our God, departed from our God. That is the God who belongs to us, the God who has revealed himself to us, the God we know about, and Jeremiah perhaps leads in providing for us the insight into this kind of defection, Jeremiah, who spoke the word of God repeatedly to Judah. He says in chapter 2 verse 13, this is God speaking through the prophet, for my people have committed two evils, they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, to hew for themselves systems, broken systems that can hold no water, substituting something for God, the very God they know, the very God who has revealed himself to them repeatedly.

Later in that chapter in verse 19, your own wickedness will correct you, your apostasies will reprove you. You have lain down as a harlot. That refers to creating idols in groves and worshiping those idols, a kind of spiritual adultery, spiritual harlotry. And though you wash yourself with lye and use much soap, the stain of your iniquity is before me, declares the Lord God. Again, the dire circumstances and results are pronounced upon a people who defect from the God who has revealed himself to them. In chapter 3 verse 20, the prophet writes, The words of God surely as a woman treacherously departs from her lover, so, or her companion, her husband, so you have dealt treacherously with me, O house of Israel, declares the Lord.

A voice is heard on the bare heights, the weeping, and the supplications of the sons of Israel, because they have perverted their way, they have forgotten the Lord their God. The agony of all of this reaches the heart of God himself. And his tears are laid out in the book of Jeremiah. Jeremiah is known as the weeping prophet. Chapter 9 verse 18, Let them make haste and take up a wailing for us, that our eyes may shed tears and our eyelids flow with water, for a voice of wailing is heard from Zion.

How are we ruined? Again, you see the tears of God in Jeremiah 14, again in Jeremiah 31, and even in Lamentations, that wonderful little book by Jeremiah. Again, you see how God weeps over this condition. Lamentations 2.11, My eyes fail because of tears. My spirit is greatly troubled. My heart is poured out on the earth because of the destruction of the daughter of my people, when little ones and infants faint in the streets of the city. It comes all the way down to the destruction of the little ones, when a people defects from God.

And when you see the tears of God over spiritual defection and apostasy and rebellion, you would expect to see that in the case of God incarnate, and indeed you do. When you come into the New Testament, for example, perhaps one of the most familiar is in Luke 19, where we come across the tears of Jesus. Luke 19 verse 41, He approaches Jerusalem, it says, He saw the city and wept over it, saying, If you had known in this day even you, the things which make for peace, if you only knew what you had rejected, better whom you had rejected.

And I want to lay that down in that fashion, because I want you to understand that spiritual defection, spiritual apostasy, false discipleship breaks the heart of God and the heart of Christ. Now, I believe one of the most pathetic, one of the most sorrowful, one of the most profoundly touching texts in Scripture on this subject is John 6. So you can go to John 6, that’s where we are in our study of the Gospel of John. The pathos in this chapter really is overwhelming. Hopefully you can grow to grasp it in some way, not only intellectually, but even emotionally.

The sorrow is so great, as you see our Lord Jesus leaning hard all through this chapter on divine sovereignty. You know, we say that to people all the time, that when you can’t understand life, and you can’t understand circumstance, you don’t know why things have gone the way they’ve gone, when our children deeply disappoint you, or your grandchildren disappoint you, or troubles come your way, or disease, or the threat of death, or disappointment, you lean hard on the sovereignty of God, right? I mean, we go back to the confidence that God is sovereign.

God overrules everything, God is in charge, nothing is outside his purpose and his will. Here in John 6, we find Jesus himself leaning hard on the sovereignty of God. Remember now, while fully God, he is fully man. And while fully man, he is tempted at all points like we are, and if God weeps over spiritual defection, Jesus does as well. And it pains him profoundly, and even he in his incarnation leans on the sovereignty of God to maintain his composure as this thing begins to become clear. And what is it that’s the issue here? The issue here is spiritual defection, spiritual apostasy.

It’s noted at the end of the chapter, verse 66, as a result of this, many of his disciples withdrew, and were not walking with him anymore. And then that sad melancholy statement of verse 67, Jesus said to the 12, you do not want to go away also, do you? It’s really an agonizing, painful experience for our Lord. So perfect, so compassionate, so powerful, fully God, gracious, merciful, kind. This chapter starts out with him spending the day healing like every day. And then this massive feeding of 20 to 25,000 people, which demonstrates compassion and power.

And it ends in chapter seven, verse one, with the Jews seeking to kill him. And just before that, the chapter itself ends with the defection of many of his followers. This is a heartbreaking chapter. It’s a crushing chapter. At the same time, it leads us to understand that there are going to be many false followers of Jesus. Look, I’m only a representative of Jesus and can’t come close to him in any sense. You would expect false followers of me or any other pastor. You might expect false followers of you in your ministry to people.

But Jesus? Hard to imagine after having been exposed to his person and his power. But this is about defective disciples. That’s what this chapter’s about. Now look, this is 71 verses. That’s a long chapter. In a perfect world, I would start now, go through the entire chapter and finish at nine tonight. That would be in a perfect world. Then you would have this experience on one occasion, in one day, in one place. It would be powerful. I can’t do that. And I could get lost in the details of this chapter, because there are many aspects to it.

But I think the way to protect against getting lost in the details and somehow simulate the idea that you’re getting the big picture, even though we can’t go through it all at once, is to tell you this. There’s one theme here. And if you can get the one theme that encapsulates the chapter, then it will hold together for you, even though it’s strung out over a few weeks. The theme is this, the characteristics of false discipleship. This chapter is here to show us the difference between a true and false follower of Jesus.

This is a huge issue. That’s why there’s 71 verses given to this. This is not a minor detail. And if I’m going to be criticized for anything, I would welcome the criticism that I fear that many people who profess Christ don’t know Him, that I’m sure that the way is narrow and few there be that find it, and a false way is broad and many there be that go on that road. I will take the criticism that many will say, Lord, Lord, and Jesus will say, I don’t know you, never have. That’s a welcomed criticism.

Thank you for joining us in this exploration of spiritual defection. Until next time, remember to keep the faith, stay strong and continue to shine your light in the world. To hear these daily devotions of your daily bread, please log on to goddessgovernment.com. Goodbye, and may your faith always lead the world. [tr:trw].