A JAARS missionary pilot was running the engines up for the first time since the left engine had been replaced. Temperature, check. Magnetos charging, check. RPMs, check. Oil pressure, uh oh! The left engine—the newly replaced engine—was low on oil pressure! By a good bit! Quick, shut it down before damage ensues!

He headed into the hangar to alert the mechanics. Everyone was scratching their heads. How could the brand new engine be that low on oil pressure? Then someone decided to pull out the log book on the plane. Guess what! The left engine was replaced on account of—wait for it!—low oil pressure.

Out to the plane they all went. One of the mechanics had an idea. He switched the oil pressure gauges so that the left gauge now read the right engine and the right gauge read the left engine. “Start ‘er up!” he said. Lo and behold, once the engines were powered up, now the right engine was substantially low on oil pressure and the left engine was operating in the normal range.

All of the men had a sick look on their faces. Because of a malfunctioning gauge that cost only dollars, they had changed out a perfectly good engine, purchased a brand new one for thousands, and lost the use of a thoroughly airworthy airplane for months! There were a lot of downward-looking eyes and shuffling feet as each man who’d been a part of the project realized he’d been thoroughly bamboozled by a lying oil pressure gauge. He’d put his faith in a false teacher, if you will. A beguiler. A deceiver. He knew better! But he skipped crucial steps he’d learned in training. And by believing that lie he had made a prohibitively expensive mistake and dramatically delayed the gospel endeavor in that region. False teaching exacts a terrible price.

In these three short pastoral epistles we’re studying I count 42 verses that address false teachers or teaching. It must certainly be a thing!

Are we being very careful to examine what we’re being taught? “Old error in new dress is error nonetheless,” said Screwtape.* That Liar from the beginning will repackage it, rebrand it, and modernize it, and it’ll go flying off the shelf.

Don’t be a sucker for a lying oil pressure gauge. Examine everything carefully like the Bereans, who searched the Scriptures day after day to see if Paul and Silas were teaching the truth (Acts 17:11).

* C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters, Geoffrey Bles Publisher, 1942.