The Fredom Trap

What do James Talarico, Joel Osteen, and Karl Marx have in common?

Like the false teachers in 2 Peter 2, they all lead people astray by promising a form of freedom. This message will help you recognize deceptive promises in our day and pursue the kind of freedom that leads to joy and fullness of life instead of bondage to sin.

2 Peter 2:19 They promise them freedom, while they themselves are slaves of depravity–for a man is a slave to whatever has mastered him.

Introduction

What do James Talarico, Joel Osteen, and Karl Marx have in common? Like the false teachers in 2 Peter 2, they all lead people astray by promising a form of freedom. We saw in our last study that the false teachers in Peter’s day were deceiving people by offering them freedom.

2 Peter 2:18 … by appealing to the lustful desires of flesh, they entice people … 19 They promise them freedom

The freedom they offered was not freedom from sin, but freedom to sin—freedom to indulge your flesh. You can be free from all God’s restrictions on your behavior. And we saw that people are still pedaling that lie today and leading people astray with it.

I gave some examples last time, but there are two other examples I didn’t mention , but they’re important enough that I decided I wanted to make a special message just on these to warn you about them.

There is probably no word in our culture that is more universally loved than the word freedom. But it can be defined so many different ways that it’s the perfect word for false teachers to use to deceive people.

And I want to show you two more ways this word is being used by modern deceivers. Both of them have to do with promising freedom from trouble. That is an incredibly popular message. People will line up around the block to hear you tell them how they can be free from problems and hardships and pain and difficulty.

Freedom from Poverty & Sickness (The Prosperity Gospel)

The first one is commonly called the prosperity gospel. And the basic message is: God wants you to be rich. His desire is to bless you, and blessing means lots of money, luxurious living, good health, and freedom from trouble—financial trouble, physical trouble, or really any kind of trouble. If you have enough faith, you can be free from all that. That’s an incredibly popular message—all around the world. Especially in poor countries.

The only problem with that is it’s the opposite of what Jesus promised. He said,

John 16:33 “… In this world you will have trouble.”

Peter said the same thing.

1 Peter 4:12 Dear friends, do not be surprised at the painful trial you are suffering, as though something strange were happening to you.

Christianity does not promise freedom from trouble. It promises freedom from sinful responses to suffering, and freedom from having to endure suffering in your own strength. It promises freedom from needless, unnecessary suffering that has no divine purpose. It even offers freedom from having to figure out what the meaning of your suffering is. And after Jesus comes back and makes all things new, it promises freedom from suffering altogether. But in this world, Jesus said, “You will have trouble.”

And the tragic fact is that when the prosperity preachers promise freedom from trouble, and then trouble happens, the people don’t blame those false teachers—they blame God for not following through on what they believed was a promise.

Beware of the health/wealth/prosperity heresy. Those preachers train people to love money.

1 Timothy 6:9 People who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction. 10 For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs. 11 But you, man of God, flee from all this, and pursue righteousness

Love of money is a temptation and a trap that plunge you into harmful desires and ruin and destruction and all kinds of evil and eventually causes you to wander from the faith and pierce yourself with many griefs. That’s how deadly the love of money is, and the prosperity preachers, who should be teaching people how to escape from that—they should be saying what Paul said—“Flee from all this!” But instead of teaching people how to escape from love of money, they train people to love money and to devote themselves to seeking earthly riches. It’s hard to think of a more sure-fire way to destroy people spiritually.

Freedom from Oppression (Liberation Theology)

Another devastating heresy that comes as a promise of freedom is called Liberation Theology. It has the word “liberation” (freedom”) right in it. Liberation Theology promises freedom from oppression. They find a group of people who is being oppressed (or who feels like they’re being oppressed) and tell them, “Hey, all that language in the Bible about salvation—that’s not talking about salvation from sin or judgment or hell or anything like that. It’s talking about political liberation from oppression.” So for those people, it has nothing to do with your heart or your relationship with God. It’s all political—breaking free from the yoke of whoever is oppressing you—the government, your employer, society in general, an ethnic group, wealthy people. And salvation is all about bringing those people down by whatever means possible. Bring them down, and you’ll be free.

Marxism

And if you hear all that and think, “That sounds like Marxism”—that’s exactly what it is. Marx came up with all these ideas, then, 100 years later, a bunch of academics expanded Marxist ideas to apply to more people and they renamed it Critical Theory. Then came Liberation Theology, which took all those ideas and attached Bible verses to them, which wasn’t hard to do because the Bible has a lot to say in condemning oppression. Again, they take biblical language and use it to say the opposite of what the Bible says with that language.

All these movements hold the same core beliefs, they just keep naming it. First Marxism, then Critical Theory, then Liberation Theology, and now the most recent name—woke, or wokeism. It would be oversimplifying to say those are all exactly identical, but they’re all based on the same, core Marxist ideas that tell you the main goal in life is to bring down the rich powerful people or whoever you think of as being the oppressors.

And this is how you get false teachers like James Talarico or Raphael Warnock or Jeremiah Wright. You hear some of the bizarre, outrageous things those guys say about God or the Bible or Christianity, and they say them in sermons in churches on Sunday morning. And you think, “How can they say things like that? Aren’t they even a little hesitant to preach things that are the exact opposite of what the Bible says in church? Preaching sermons in favor of abortion and God is LGBTQ and you’re a victim and the Bible isn’t the Word of God and I hate Christianity.

All that stuff sounds crazy to us, but it doesn’t sound crazy to them at all. You watch clips of James Talarico preaching in a church, and he’s not apologetic or the least bit hesitant. He doesn’t say, “I know this sounds crazy, but hear me out …” No, he just says these things like they’re the most normal, orthodox, rock solid biblical teachings in the world.

Why? Because in his world, it is perfectly orthodox. When you grow up in one of those churches, and you go to one of those seminaries, it’s drilled into you—Christianity is all about freedom from oppression. So anything along that line makes perfect sense.

How can they stand up in a pulpit with a Bible in front of them and say it’s perfectly okay to kill the child in your womb? To them it makes perfect sense. If you’re pregnant and you don’t want to be, you’re oppressed. You’re being oppressed by the people who say you should carry that baby to term. And ultimately, you’re being oppressed by the baby itself. In many cases you can convince them the baby is a person and it still doesn’t matter because that little person is oppressing you. It’s causing problems—financial hardship, physical hardship, it’s going to make you poor and take away your freedoms. And in Marxist morality, oppressors are fair game to kill.

That’s where the whole culture of death on the left comes from. It’s why so many on the left celebrated when Luigi Mangioni gunned down someone he considered a rich oppressor in cold blood—even though that guy hadn’t done anything to Mangione. If you feel oppressed, you’ve got to rise up, and if getting freedom requires bloodshed, so be it.

Of course, not everyone on the political left thinks that way, but it is much more prevalent on the left. One poll showed that 25% of those who identify as very liberal believe political violence can be justified, compared to 3% of those who identify as very conservative.[1] That’s not because those people grew up in violent neighborhoods or that they are just naturally have violent genes or anything like that. It’s because the foundation of leftist philosophy is Marxism, and Marxism tends to hold a low value on human life. That’s clear from the tens of millions of people who were slaughtered in the 20^th Century by their own Marxist government.

Appealing to the Flesh

When you and I see clips of preachers like James Talarico saying crazy things from the pulpit in a church, we wonder, why don’t the people in those churches get up and walk out? What’s the appeal? Well, remember what Peter said:

2 Peter 2:18 For they mouth high-sounding emptiness, and, by appealing to the lustful desires of flesh, they entice people

They have highly sophisticated, complex rhetoric that sounds really smart, even though it’s mostly hot air without much real meaning. And they use all that clever rhetoric to appeal to fleshly desires—sinful, ungodly impulses.

So what do Osteen and Talarico and Marx have in common? They all promise freedom from trouble. And they do it by appealing to sinful desires of the flesh.

Prosperity preachers like Joel Osteen appeal to greed and the love of money. The woke, Marxist preachers appeal to envy and discontent. “Your life is hard because of all those rich people. Give me your support, and I promise, I’ll hurt those people. And I’ll take their money and give it to you.”

Marxism advances by stirring up anger in malcontents. People usually think of Marxism as appealing to workers, because that’s how it was in Russia in the early 1900’s. They stirred up the laborers to revolt against the wealthy business owners.

But the reason they went after workers was because the workers were the people in the society who felt oppressed. They tried that in America, but it didn’t work because workers didn’t feel oppressed. So they shifted to focus on certain minorities who had been oppressed. And now they’re just training various groups to feel oppressed, based on sexuality or skin color or gender or whatever. Marxism isn’t just about getting laborers to rise up against business owners. It’s about finding anyone who feels oppressed, or creating a class of people who feel oppressed, and getting them to rise up against whoever they think is responsible. Then you get a revolution, and the Marxists take over and get rich. That’s a repeated pattern in history. They don’t care who brings about the revolution, just so there is one. And they do that by getting a bunch of people who are angry about what they think is oppression, then appealing to that anger.

The reason the people in those woke churches don’t walk out is because they’ve been deceived by years of preaching that appealed to their envy and anger and greed. They’ve had pastors who came out of seminaries that taught Liberation Theology or Critical Theory or Wokeism or some other brand of Marxism. And those pastors have drilled into their heads that they are victims, and the oppressors have done terrible things to them. And the tacit, unspoken, but very clear message is, “Your envy and anger and greed are justified and acting on them is the way to freedom.

What the Bible Says about Oppression

I said a minute ago that the Bible says a lot about oppression. Scripture condemns oppression in very strong language—God has no tolerance for it at all. But what is Scripture’s solution to oppression? Is it envy, anger, violence, and revolution? No.

So what should you do? Well, you can seek protection from the government, since protection from oppression is one of the main reasons why God gave governments their power. So call the police, go to court, use the law as much as you can.

In many cases, the authorities are the oppressors, and when that happens, Scripture calls oppressed people to cry out to God for deliverance, and then to be patient while they wait for God to respond. The book of James was written to people who were being oppressed. The rich employers were withholding wages, and even prosecuting and putting to death innocent people. James 5:1-6 condemns those rich oppressors. And then in v.7 James tells the people who are being oppressed what to do about it.

James 5:7 Be patient, then, brothers, until the Lord’s coming. … 9 Don’t grumble against each other … You have heard of Job’s perseverance and have seen what the Lord finally brought about. The Lord is full of compassion and mercy. … 13 Is any one of you in trouble? He should pray.

So those are some steps you can take when you’re being oppressed. But far more important than that is the attitude you have in your heart. Godly attitudes are the path to true freedom. So Jesus said:

Matthew 5:44 Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.

And if someone richer than you or more powerful than you, instead of envy, respond with love. And love rejoices with those who rejoice (Romans 12:15). When you feel envy coming on—and envy is any time you feel displeasure at someone else’s good fortune (“That guy has so much money. He doesn’t deserve that. I should have some of that money.”)—anytime you feel displeasure over someone else’s good fortune, that’s envy and it’s sin, because it’s the opposite of love. Love rejoices with those who rejoice. “That guy got the promotion? Good for him!” “She won the lottery? I’m happy for her.” If you can learn to genuinely take pleasure in other people’s good fortune, you can be happy all the time because there is always someone who is getting good things. But if you have envy, then you can never be happy, because there are always other people getting good things. That’s true freedom.

So those are the attitudes we should have when we’re on the bottom and someone else is on top. What about political solutions to oppression? Does the Bible provide guidance on that? Yes. Scripture calls governments to carry out justice. And to the degree that you have political power or influence, it should always be in the direction of justice. When you vote, vote for whichever party is more likely to bring justice.

Reparations?

But what is justice? Is it treating everyone the same? Or is it giving special preference to people who have been oppressed in the past to make up for what they suffered? Marxism and Wokeism say you should treat everyone according to their class. If you are in the oppressed class, you should get reparations and special treatment to make up for the past, even if you’ve never personally been oppressed because past oppression of your class is probably having negative effects on you today.

And if you’re in the oppressor class, you’re guilty and should be penalized even if you never personally oppressed anyone. So justice is giving special favorable treatment to the poor and oppressed.

They call that “social justice.” That’s another perversion of language. The biblical word for “social justice” is “injustice.” Trying to make everyone have the same amount of money or same amount of power or same amount of anything is injustice. Taking money away from someone who earned it to give it to someone who didn’t earn it is injustice. And being generous with other people’s money isn’t generosity. If you want to be generous, be generous with your own money.

The biblical concept of justice is to evaluate each person based on what he or she has done. And giving someone favorable treatment just because they belong to an oppressed class is wrong—that’s injustice. And giving special treatment to the poor just because they are poor is wrong.

Exodus 23:3 and do not show favoritism to a poor man in his lawsuit.

Leviticus 19:15 Do not pervert justice; do not show partiality to the poor or favoritism to the great, but judge your neighbor fairly.

Now again, as an individual, it’s great to give special treatment to the poor. We should be especially generous to the poor. But the government should treat poor and rich exactly the same when it comes to administering justice. You can’t fix past injustice with more injustice in the other direction. Two injustices don’t make a justice.

So the government should be just, and to the degree that you hold political power, you have the responsibility to be just. For most of us, the only political power we have is voting. So vote for justice. If you vote for someone because he promises to take money away from someone else and give it to you, that’s immoral. It’s exactly the same sin in the heart as stealing.

If you vote for someone to hurt people just because they have power or wealth, that’s immoral. (And it’s foolish. If we got rid of millionaires and billionaires, we’d live in a third world country and none of us would have jobs. But that’s another topic.) The point here is that all of us should strive for justice.

The point here is about motives—the kinds of motives they appeal to to get your vote.

You don’t normally think of Joel Osteen and James Talarico as being in the same category, and they really are very different in many ways, but their core strategy is the same. And it’s the same as the false teachers in 2 Peter 2—they appeal to fleshly, sinful desires. And they promise people a twisted form of freedom. Whether it be freedom to indulge the flesh, freedom from poverty and hardship, or freedom from oppression—they promise people freedoms the Bible doesn’t promise. Freedoms that lead people straight into bondage.

The freedom to indulge the flesh leads people into bondage to their fleshly desires. Pursuing freedom from poverty leads people into bondage to greed and the love of money. Pursuing Marxism leads people into bondage to envy and anger (and ultimately, bondage to the Marxists who gain power after the revolution. Just look at the Bolshevik Revolution. The Communists in Russia promised freedom from oppression for all the workers, and after the revolution, the people in the USSR lived under horrific oppression at the hands of the Marxists.)

And I realize this may sound more like a political lesson than a Bible study, but I say all this because we’re studying a verse that warns about being deceived by people who promise freedom and then appeal to the desires of the flesh. And that’s exactly what’s happening in the political landscape in our country right now. And anytime politics steps into biblical territory, they have left their realm and come into ours, and when it comes to spiritual truth, the Bible reigns supreme over every ideology or system or set of ideas. Nothing is out of bounds for God because this is his world.

Conclusion

Beware of false promises of freedom. Peter’s false teachers said: “You don’t have to restrain your desires.” Joel Osteen says: “You don’t have to suffer financial hardship or poor health.” James Talarico and the woke preachers say: “You don’t have to tolerate other people having more money and power than you.”

And they’re all appealing to the broken part of you that, if you give it freedom, will destroy you.

True Freedom

Here’s the bottom line: When Jesus said, “In this world you will have trouble,” and “take up your cross and follow me and the world will hate you,” and then he said, “If you hold to my teaching … the truth will set you free” (John 8:31-32), he was pointing us toward true freedom. He pointed straight at trouble and hardship and persecution and oppression and difficulty and poverty and becoming a slave to everyone and said, “Follow me through that, because right on the other side of that is real freedom that brings life.” The false teachers point to trouble and promise, “I’ll give you freedom from that. Follow me—let’s run the opposite way from that.” And they lead you straight down the path of destruction and death.

So when a preacher offers freedom, ask two simple questions: Peter said a man is a slaved to whatever masters him. We found last time that every new freedom comes with a master. So ask yourself:

• If I pursue this freedom, what master will it bring me under?

The freedom from restrictions on your flesh message will make you a slave to fleshly desires. The freedom from poverty message will make you a slave to greed and the love of money. The freedom from political oppression message will make you a slave to whoever takes power in place of your current oppressors. True freedom will make you a slave of God.

• When a preacher offers you freedom, ask yourself—What part of me is he appealing to?

Is he appealing to my flesh? Or is he appealing to the part of me that longs to be like Christ? Because true freedom is that which enables you to become more human, more of what God created you to be, more like Christ.

[1] https://thehill.com/national-security/5504569-americans-political-violence-poll/.

[1] The reason Israel turned away from God was because of a memory problem. God warned them over and over—Don’t forget what it was like to be slaves, and don’t forget what I did to deliver you.” And what happened?Psalm 78:11 They forgot what he had done, the wonders he had shown them. They forgot everything God told them to remember. But they did remember one thing. Numbers 11:5 We remember the fish we ate in Egypt at no cost– also the cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions and garlic. They forgot the misery of their bondage. But they remembered the food.

[2] From ch.7.