Wanting a simple breakfast, quick and easy to fix with little mess to clean up after, I chose to hard-boil a few eggs.  After all, how difficult could that be???
     I started some water boiling and picked out three nice looking eggs.  How long should they cook?  I didn’t know.  The answer should be somewhere in my trusty cookbook.  Then I remembered about those little sand-in-the-hour-glass egg-timers as being labeled as “3 minute” and “1 minute.”  Guessing that one-minute timers were for cooking soft-boiled eggs, I put my cold eggs in the boiling water and set my cookstove’s timer for three minutes.  When the timer stopped, I carefully drained the hot water and added cold water to cool the eggs for easy peeling.
     Were the eggs hard-boiled?  Aside from actually cracking open the eggs, the only test I ever heard was to try spinning the eggs on their sides like tops. I tried to spin the eggs.  All three spun and spun and spun.  I guessed they had boiled enough.
     It was time for the moment of truth.  I peeled the first egg.  What a mess!  The egg was still full of clear and yellow liquids except for a thin layer of cooked egg-white lining the shell.  My “hard-boiled” egg was ruined.
     What had gone wrong?!?  The egg was fresh.  My desire was sincere.  I cooked the egg.  I followed the test as it was told to me.  So what was the problem???
     The root of the problem was my lack of correct knowledge.  I didn’t know how to cook a hard-boiled egg.  My cookbook had reliable cooking instructions.  But instead of searching for good answers from my cookbook, I made up an answer using misunderstood facts and unconfirmed hearsay.
     Imagine if I had served those eggs to my friends or family, or if I had told them how to cook hard-boiled eggs.  My spinning test could “prove” the eggs were cooked, but all my sincere desire would not change the fact that they were still mostly raw.
     
     This sort of mistake happens in religion as well as in cooking.  It often happens to people in their search for God and His will for their lives.  And it happens remarkably the same way.  Combine a few misunderstood facts with some convincing guesswork, neglect most of the instructions God has written down in His “cookbook,” add a generous measure of misplaced trust, and the result is a terrible mess.  And the mess spreads farthest when sincere people eagerly share their mistaken understandings with the friends and family they want most to help.
     The Bible points out the need to be careful about what we teach and about who we let teach us God’s ways.  “Beloved, believe not every spirit,” the apostle John instructs and warns Christians in 1 John 4:1, “but prove the spirits, whether they are of God; because many false prophets are gone out into the world.”
     The apostle Paul expresses a similar concern in his second letter to the church in Corinth.  “But what I do, I will also continue to do,” he explains in chapter 11 verses 12 through 15 concerning false ministers, “that I may cut off the opportunity from those who desire an opportunity to be regarded just as we are in the things of which they boast.  For such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into apostles of Christ.  And no wonder!  For Satan himself transforms himself into an angel of light.  Therefore it is no great thing if his ministers also transform themselves into ministers of righteousness, whose end will be according to their works.”
     Jesus points out the deceitful nature of Satan and his servants to a crowd of people who are trying discredit Jesus.  We read part of this discussion in John’s gospel, chapter 8, verses 38-45.  Jesus says, “‘I speak what I have seen with My Father, and you do what you have seen with your father.’”
     “They answered and said to Him, ‘Abraham is our father.’”
     “Jesus said to them, ‘If you were Abraham’s children, you would do the works of Abraham.  But now you seek to kill Me, a Man who has told you the truth which I heard from God.  Abraham did not do this.  You do the deeds of your father.’”
     “Then they said to Him, ‘We were not born of fornication; we have one Father, God.’”
     “Jesus said to them, ‘If God were your Father, you would love Me, for I proceeded forth and came from God; nor have I come of Myself, but He sent Me.  Why do you not understand My speech?  Because you are not able to listen to My word.
     “‘You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do.  He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him.  When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources, for he is a liar and the father of it.
     “‘But because I tell the truth, you do not believe Me.  Which of you convicts Me of sin?  And if I tell the truth, why do you not believe Me?
     “‘He who is of God hears God’s words;  therefore you do not hear, because you are not of God.’”
     
     Satan disguises himself as a messenger of light because he is a liar and a murderer.  False ministers do not hear God’s words because they are not of God.  They disguise themselves as ministers of righteousness.  But why would they do that?  Is it by choice or are they deceived?  Do they know they are in the wrong?
     Some false ministers have a since zeal for God, but reject God because of their lack of proper knowledge.  “Brethren, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for Israel is that they may be saved,” Paul reveals in Romans chapter 10 verses 1 through 3.  “For I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge.  For they being ignorant of God’s righteousness, and seeking to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted to the righteousness of God.”
     Some false ministers reject God because they love the power and prestige of controlling people.  In verses 9 and 10 of his third letter, John writes, “I wrote to the church, but Diotrephes, who loves to have the preeminence among them, does not receive us.  Therefore, if I come, I will call to mind his deeds which he does, prating against us with malicious words.  And not content with that, he himself does not receive the brethren, and forbids those who wish to, putting them out of the church.”
     Some false ministers reject God because they have damaged their consciences.  “Now the Spirit expressly says that in latter times some will depart from the faith,” Paul instructs to Timothy in 1 Timothy 4:1-3, “giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons, speaking lies in hypocrisy, having their own conscience seared with a hot iron, forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from foods which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth.”
     Some false ministers reject God because their love of themselves prevents them from the knowledge of the truth.  “But know this, that in the last days perilous times will come:”  Paul begins chapter 3 of his second letter to Timothy.  “For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having a form of godliness but denying its power.  And from such people turn away!”  He continues this warning saying, “For of this sort are those who creep into households and make captives of gullible women loaded down with sins, led away by various lusts, always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.”
     Some false ministers reject God in order to please their followers.  Paul is aware of this fact as he exhorts Timothy to be a good minister.  In 2 Timothy 4:1-5, he writes, “I charge you therefore before God and the Lord Jesus Christ, who will judge the living and the dead at His appearing and His kingdom:  Preach the word!  Be ready in season and out of season.  Convince, rebuke, exhort, with all longsuffering and teaching.”  Why is this so important to Paul?  “For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers; and they will turn their ears away from the truth, and be turned aside to fables.  But you be watchful in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.”
     Some false ministers reject God simply because they refuse to accept Him and His Word.  “And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world,” Jesus explains in John 3:19- 21, “and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.  For everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed.  But he who does the truth comes to the light, that his deeds may be clearly seen, that they have been done in God.”
     What is our best defense against our own ignorance and against false teachers?  In 2 Timothy 3:16-17, Paul reminds Timothy and us, “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.”  In verse 15 of the previous chapter, he states our responsibility plainly, “Be diligent to present yourself approved to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.”
     
     Whatever the reasons false ministers reject God, the result is the same.  They serve Satan under the appearance of serving God, they teach lies, and they lead people away from God.
     Are you a “hard-boiled Christian,” being taught correctly and living in obedience to God?  Or are you a “soft-boiled Christian” being led astray by false ministers and living in rejection of God?  We must learn to plow the fields of our lives and search the Scriptures for ourselves as to whether our ministers work for or against God.