Scripture: 2 Timothy 4:10a
Sermon Series: Stormproof – Sermon 03

Are you familiar with the Great Wall of China? Literally, the “Ten-thousand-mile-long wall” is a series of fortifications built across the northern border of ancient China as protection against invaders. The walls date to the 7th century BC and were added to for the next 1,000 years.

Erected by mass labor at heavy governmental expense, the Wall seemed to be the guarantee that China would be safe from its enemies. It didn’t work. Not because it was inadequate as a physical barrier, but because guards along the wall were open to bribes. It was the human element that failed. What collapsed was character which proved insufficient to make the great structure that had been constructed for protection insufficient to truly work.

Some of the saddest words in all of God’s Word are in 2 Timothy 4:10a (p. 936), For Demas, in love with this present world, has deserted me…

You can almost hear the tears in Paul’s voice. It was Defection, spiritual defection. Today it’s called “Deconstruction.” Deconstruction is a term that’s increasingly been used in evangelical circles over the past decade.

“Deconstruction” is the heading most recently applied to the process of questioning, doubting, and ultimately rejecting the Christian faith. In practice, “deconstruction” almost always acts as a polite cover for “demolition.” It usually means replacing uncomfortable parts of biblical Christianity with culturally or personally popular ideas. This morning as we continue our series: Stormproof, we want to talk about Defection.

None of this is new. It’s been happening before time began. Periodically, though there’s someone who “deconstructs” who shocks you. That happened to me when in 2019 Joshua Harris deconstructed. Harris is the author of the popular book, I Kissed Dating Goodbye. He published the book to encourage Christian young people to avoid the contemporary dating culture. He became a Christian celebrity, especially popular in homeschool circles. Ultimately, he wrote multiple books and pastored the influential Covenant Life Church in the DC area.

It’s heartbreaking. Harris doesn’t consider himself a Christian anymore, divorced his wife of 21 years, and has affirmed the LGBTQ culture.

But you can be raised by godly parents, even in one of the godliest known pastor’s homes in America, be taught the truth of the Scriptures, even seem to personally embrace the gospel for a season, but end up walking away from the faith. That’s the heartbreaking story of Abraham Piper, one of the sons of Pastor John Piper and his wife, Noel.

At the age of 19 Abraham was disciplined out of his father’s church, Bethlehem Baptist, for denying the faith. He was later restored to fellowship, only to renounce his faith yet again. Today Abraham has over 2 million TikTok followers and uses his platform to mock biblical Christianity.

Defection has touched the life of nearly every Christ-follower. If you’ve been a believer very long, you probably know someone who’s defected, someone who at one time was a professing Christian but has abandoned the faith. What hurts so badly is that it may be someone you love, an adult child, close relative or friend, or someone you admired in the faith. You’ve seen them walk away from Jesus. Frankly, it’s hard to process. It’s hard to know what to think about it and to know what to say. This morning, we want to work through Defection and end with hope. Our God is the God of hope!

1. There are warning signs of spiritual defection. 

Demas is spoken of by Paul three times in the New Testament. He’s called a fellow worker in Philemon 24. In Colossians he’s only mentioned. Later, Demas would forsake Paul and Christianity.

The word deserted in the original means to utterly abandon, with the idea of leaving someone in a dire situation. You’ll see professing Christians who do this if you go on as a Christ-follower. Demas was a fair-weather disciple who failed to count the cost of commitment to Christ. This kind of person is described in the Parable of the Sower, And the ones on the rock are those who, when they hear the Word, receive it with joy. But these have no root; they believe for a while, and in time of testing fall away (Luke 8:13). Often trials or persecution happen. It appears that’s what happened to Demas when Paul was put in prison. He went back to the world and forsook Christ.

It can happen when young people go off to college and don’t have roots for their faith. Or you’re single and meet someone who doesn’t know the Lord, you start a relationship. Suddenly, you’re spiritually AWOL.

The world does not mean “humanity” as in John 3:16, where God so loved the world. It means this present age. It’s world affairs, culture, riches, advantages, pleasures, work, etc., which though empty and fleeting, stir desire, seduce us from God and are obstacles to the cause of Christ.

It’s idolatry. Idolatry is when we love anything more than Jesus. It doesn’t have to be evil behavior. As Os Guinness says, “Idolatry may not involve explicit denials of God’s existence or character. It may well come in the form of an over-attachment to something that is in itself perfectly good…An idol can be a physical object, a property, a person, an activity, a role, an institution, a hope, an image, an idea, a pleasure, a hero, anything that can substitute for God.” It’s living for this dying, temporal world rather than the eternal Kingdom of Jesus Christ.

Study the Old Testament and you’ll find that the same steps ancient Jews took are the ones a defector takes today. They apply to you if you’re on the verge of turning from biblical Christianity. What are the steps of defection?

Defection does not occur suddenly. In Israel, the fathers began to defect, and children carried it on. No person suddenly abandons the faith. There’s no such thing as instant defection. Erosion takes place over time. A small compromise is followed by a second. Both are tolerated with a larger one.

Defection often begins in the thought life, makes its way into the heart, and acts of life. It takes time for defection to run its course. A compromise today can lead to a character flaw tomorrow. A character failure tomorrow can determine your future. The solution is to pull the weed now, while it’s small. 

Defection often takes place in times of blessing. Defection comes in times of triumph, prosperity, and not usually in times of trial. We begin resting on our laurels and become independent of our true power source. Study the life of David. He fell away from God and committed adultery at the peak of his career. When testing comes, we’re often purified; when prosperity comes, we’re vulnerable. It’s a pattern found throughout the Bible.

If you’re at the top of your game at work or everything in your life is going well, you’re vulnerable. Be on guard. Military leaders will tell you that the most vulnerable time for an attack is right after a battle has been won.

Defection flourishes under weak biblical teaching. The Bible warns about itching ears. “For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, they will heap up for themselves teachers who will tickle their ears” (2 Timothy 4:13). It’s hard to preach against sin. It’s hard to share what the Bible says about hell. It’s what the Bible teaches though, and we must share God’s truth. “Itching ears” is a figure of speech that refers to people’s felt needs or wants. It’s these desires that impel someone to believe whatever he/she wants rather than God’s truth.

Yet, if you’re not in the Word, or you’re not listening to clear, sometimes hard biblical teaching about sin, even sins in your life, you’re vulnerable.

In the 4^th century, John Chrysostom, a great preacher of the early church said, The road to Hell is paved with the bones of errant priests. As the preacher goes, so goes the church. Run from a church that won’t talk about the hard things in Scripture, have a fear of offending or losing an audience. God’s spokespersons must share truth for an audience of One.

Defection involves two specific sins: forsaking the one true God and finding a substitute. Both are mentioned in Scripture. If you’re heading down the tubes, you’re slowly turning from the Lord and putting an artificial substitute in His place. You may be thinking I don’t need Him and His tough standards. They’re out of date. What I need is something fresh and fun.  

One of our greatest temptations is rationalization. Truth is set aside and rejected, often brashly. The sin invariably follows is justified and an alternative is put in the place of truth. That alternative is not given by God; it’s man-made. Our hearts are vile (mine is). We can easily justify any action or behavior when we don’t measure our lives by the standard of God’s Word.

Defection ends with your own sinfulness correcting you. Your defection ultimately provides its own consequences. This is the saddest step of all. It isn’t the Lord who loses. It isn’t Satan who wins; his doom is already sealed. You lose as your own sinful choices correct you. Your rejection of God’s truth will reprove you.

I’ve never seen a genuinely joyful backslidden Christian. Pagans are happier than a Christian rejecting God’s truth and will. And they often make everyone around them miserable too. I’ve never met one who could look me in the eyes and say, “These are the happiest years of my life.”

If you’re living for the Lord and you meet a backslidden Christian, they will duck and hide. They dread the thought of meeting an obedient, victorious Christian. They’ll change their circle of friends, get another job and do whatever it takes to stay away from those people whose lives are a rebuke.

The entire Bible is the story of massive defection. The rebellion against God began before the creation of the earth. The original rebel and instigator of rebellion was the one we call the Devil.  Defection is first a Satanic evil.

2. Christianity is NOT a blind leap of faith. 

An atheist fell off a cliff but managed to grab a tree limb on the way down. He’s screaming for help. Ultimately, the following conversation then took place. “Help! Is anyone up there?” “I’m here.”  “Help me! Who are you?” “I’m God, the Lord, the One you don’t believe in.” “Yes, Lord, I believe. I really believe, please help me. I can’t hang on much longer.” “That’s all right, if you really believe you have nothing to worry about. I’ll save you. You just must do one thing.” “I’ll do anything. Just save me. What do you want me to do?” “Okay, just let go of the branch.” There’s a moment of pause, then: “Is anyone else up there?”

The Bible never asks us to take a leap of faith. Danish philosopher, Soren Kierkegaard first coined the term “leap of faith.” Unfortunately, we live in a time when we’ve been contaminated with what’s called fideism.

Fideism says, “I don’t need to have a reason for what I believe. I just close my eyes like Alice in Wonderland, take a deep breath and if I try hard enough, I can believe. I jump into Jesus’ arms and take a blind leap of faith.”

Fideism is the idea that religious faith and reason are incompatible with each other. It’s the view that biblical faith is divorced from reason and can never be reconciled with it. The Bible though calls us to jump out of the darkness and into the light. The faith God’s Word calls us to is rooted and grounded in things that God does that make it clear His truth is the Truth. 

In fact, the Bible commands each person to scrutinize his or her faith. This includes fact-checking, thoughtful preparation, reasonable skepticism, and an appreciation for all God has shown in His creation. Those who examine what they believe and why they believe it, assessing those views for truth, are following a biblical mandate. Too often churches act like social clubs and fail to wrestle with the difficult questions about faith.

If you honestly look at the facts, it takes more faith to deny God than to believe in Him. A big amount of faith is required to believe there is no God. Atheists will say Christianity is based on faith while they rely on science and reason. However, their worldview requires blind faith in unproven theories that contradict logic, science, and observable reality. For example…

Atheists have faith that something comes from nothing.They believe the universe, everything out there, created itself without cause. All that you see, and you don’t see came out of nowhere. And there’s a lot we can’t see. There’s oxygen that we breathe that we can’t see, but it’s there. There are stars and planets we can’t see but are there. Humans were designed. You can see that clearly. Animals were designed to fulfill specific purposes. Creatures are a creation. Where there is a design, there’s a Designer. We were created and designed by Someone. Someone made us this way.

You can see the creation of God by looking in the mirror. There’s more proof of God than anything else in existence. Why? Because everything you see was created by God. It’s God’s creation. Believing in an intelligent designer takes less faith than believing that everything came from zero.

Atheists have faith in order coming from chaos. Atheists believe the universe and life happened by random chance. Yet, the laws of nature, gravity, and even DNA show intelligent design. Physics, mathematics, chemistry all developed by accident over lots of time according to an Atheist. It’s more faith than I have. It all just happened and came together on its own?

We know that the universe operates under precise, unchanging laws. This implies design, not randomness. Look at your smart phone. Did it randomly come together like that? The universe is far more complex than a phone. We know it didn’t all just come together perfectly out of nothing. Believing in an Intelligent Designer takes less faith than believing in random chance.

Atheists have faith in life coming from non-life. It takes faith to believe that life began by accident from non-living chemicals. It’s a theory, to me a silly one, called Abiogenesis. Darwin believed in spontaneous generation.

Science has never observed life coming from non-life. Nothing living comes from something that isn’t living. A dog doesn’t come from a rubber ball. Cats don’t come from catnip. Humans don’t come from hula hoops.

Even the simplest form of life, a cell, is incredibly complex. A cell requires millions of perfectly working parts. Who did that? The law of biogenesis, which has been proven over and over trillions of times, states that life always comes from life. Yet, atheists reject that truth that has trillions of examples.

Atheists have faith in morality without a Moral Lawgiver. Atheists believe that morality, or right from wrong, evolved over time. Everything is subjective. It can mean that adultery is wrong for you, but not for me.

God was the first One to say murder is wrong. If there is no Moral Lawgiver, it’s your opinion against mine. Morality is just subjective. But murder is wrong. All societies in existence believe that.

The reason we’re in the moral mess we’re in today is that some believe morality is subjective. This is repulsive for us, but there are those who believe child porn and molestation are “normal.” That perverted book, Lolita, about sex between a 12-year-old girl and a 37-year-old man was written in 1955 and Hollywood made it into a movie.

You can do that if morality is subjective, that there are no absolutes. Morality is universal and given to us by God. We know right and wrong. How is that? Romans 2:14-15: “For when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them.” Atheists borrow any morality from God while denying His existence. Does that make sense? Who really is taking a leap of faith?

We’re just skimming this today. If you want to check this out more, drop by our Welcome Desk and pick up a free copy of The Care for Christ.

3. How does defection happen? 

Defection starts subtly. Most of us aren’t even aware of it. Many start the voyage of the Christian life on smooth waters. As they sail out of the harbor the sky becomes dark and the craft of their faith crashes on the rocks. Defection happens far too easily.

Loss of passion for God. It usually begins with a decreasing desire for God’s presence. The fire that once burned for prayer, Bible reading, worship, and intimacy with God starts to fade. Jesus warned the church at Ephesus in Revelation 2:4: Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken the love you had at first. You may still go through the motions, but the heart is no longer deeply connected to God.

Neglect of prayer and God’s Word. As the passion for God begins to die, the next step is neglecting the spiritual disciplines. Bible reading becomes rare, prayer is a burden, and spiritual hunger wanes. Without the nourishment of the Word and connection through prayer, the soul becomes weak and vulnerable to spiritual abandonment.

Separation from Christian fellowship and community. I’m thankful for Facebook Live for those who can’t attend a worship service. But if you can attend, it’s not spiritually healthy for you to miss. It’s easy to rationalize. (We’re busy. I’m tired. I need a “me day.”) You start slipping spiritually, when you withdraw from Christian community. Christian friendships are often replaced by pagan friendships and their thinking. The Enemy uses this separation to pull the believer further away from God’s truth, joy and peace. 

Compromise with sin. As spiritual disciplines fade, compromise follows. Sins that once brought conviction now seem minor. The conscience dulls.

Usually, it’s indicated first by a change in language. Someone who wouldn’t swear finds words slipping out. What began as “one little sin” grows into habitual disobedience. James 4:17, If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them.” You rationalize choices that are clearly against God’s will, often thinking, “It’s not that bad.

Deliberate rebellion or defection. At this point, the individual may give in to open sin or even renounce their faith. This is a dangerous spiritual condition where sin is no longer seen as sin. 2 Peter 2:20-22 gives a chilling warning: It would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness than to have known it and then to turn their backs…

Conclusion

Defection is a deadly spiritual condition, but it’s not without hope. God is always ready to restore anyone who repents and returns to Him. Someone who’s deconstructed can be free. The cure is found Jeremiah 3:12 & 13.

“Go, and proclaim these words toward the north, and say,
‘Return, faithless Israel, declares the Lord.
I will not look on you in anger, for I am merciful,
declares the Lord; I will not be angry forever.
13 Only acknowledge your guilt, that you rebelled against the Lord your God”

Do you have a pen? Then, open your Bible and circle two words in Jeremiah 3:12 & 13 – circle the words return and acknowledge. That’s the cure return and acknowledge.

God isn’t angry with you. He loves you. You’ve prostituted the things you once claimed to be precious. Yet, God stands by like a loving father, saying, “Please come home. Don’t wander any longer.”

My heart is drawn to the most famous parable Jesus told – the parable of the wandering lad and the waiting dad, better known as the Prodigal Son. That kid was determined to try everything in the world to find happiness, so he defected from his home, thinking he could find everything he wanted. But you know where he finally found it? Back home. He wanted happiness and security. He couldn’t find it until he went home. He wanted a place and a name in life. He couldn’t find it, except by coming back home. He wanted love. He couldn’t find it away from home, so he came back.

And did his father meet him? His dad had been waiting, looking lovingly down the road. When he saw his son coming toward him, he ran to meet him, hugged him and kissed him, and said, “My son was lost and now is found. He’s come home!” Repentance is always accepted by our Heavenly Father! He honors it every time! God the Father is always in a hurry to forgive!

Let me end today with one of my favorite stories. On New Year’s Day, 1929, Georgia Tech played the University of California in the Rose Bowl. In that game a player named Roy Riegels recovered a fumble for California. Somehow, Riegels became confused and started running 65 yards…in the wrong direction. One of his teammates, Benny Lom, outdistanced him and tackled him just before he scored for the opposing team. When California attempted to punt, Tech blocked the kick and scored a safety which was the ultimate margin of victory.

That strange play came in the first half of the game. Everyone who was watching the game was asking the same question: “What will Coach Nibbs Price do with Roy Riegels in the second half?” The players filed off the field and went into the dressing room. They sat down on the benches and on the floor, all but Riegels. He put his blanket around his shoulders, sat down in a corner, put his face in his hands, and cried like a baby.

If you’ve played football, you know that a coach usually has a lot to say to his team during half time. That day Coach Price was quiet. No doubt he was trying to decide what to do with Riegels. The timekeeper came in and announced there were three minutes before playing time. Coach Price looked at the team and said simply, “Men, the same team that played the first half will start the second.”

The players got up and started out, all but Roy Riegels. He didn’t budge. Coach Price looked back and called to him again; still, he didn’t move. Then, Coach Price went over to where Riegels sat and said, “Roy, didn’t you hear me? The same team that played the first half will start the second.”

Roy Riegels looked up. His cheeks were wet with a strong man’s tears. “Coach,” he said, “I can’t do it to save my life. I’ve ruined you; I’ve ruined the University of California, I’ve ruined myself. I couldn’t face that crowd in the stadium to save my life.”

Then Coach Price reached out and put his hand on Riegel’s shoulder and said to him: “Roy, get up and go on back; the game is only half over.” And Roy Riegels went back, and those Tech players said that they’d never seen a man play football as Roy Riegels played that second half.

Most people hear that story and they think, “What a coach!” But I hear that story and I think, “What a God!” Because that’s my Heavenly Father!

My friend, have you defected? Get up and go on back! The game is only half over!