These verses of warning continue to the end of the chapter, and you might think negative in essence, and yet they are very constructive. That is their goal, and we see Christ, even in these negative warning verses.
You have it today. You have people who seem to pass muster. They get into the churches. They use biblical language. They speak of Christ and salvation, and claim that they have been saved, and they had a conversion experience. We think, well, that's good, and we let them in. But just now and then you have got an unruly and a vain talker, and they soon go after some wrong idea, wrong teaching, and the devil uses them to spread confusion and misunderstanding, and lead people astray. ‘There are many unruly and vain talkers and deceivers.’
We have them today and you have many of them in the Charismatic movement. Perhaps the majority of the Charismatic movement is characterised by this, but we have to be careful, because there are people who are Charismatics and Pentecostalists, and though we don't agree with their views of the gifts and so on, they are earnest Christians. But when you catch a glimpse of the God channels, you can't help thinking that the majority of Charismatics, these days, are way out and have no real respect or reverence for the authority of Scripture. You look at the God channels and you see some of these extreme Charismatic preachers and they make it up as they go along. They are not expounding the Scripture. They are making grand and sweeping statements which to the unwary sound wonderful, but they have made them up, and they don't ground them in Scripture; they are futile. They are not profitable, just misleading people. There is a fantastic amount of this going on via the Internet: all sorts of people who talk complete nonsense. They are not expounding the Bible. They have no fear before God of what they do with the Bible. They spread endless confusion and error in the churches. ‘There are many unruly [insubordinate].’ They not under the Scripture, under the rule of God.