Here we are, First and Second Peter, A Message for Today's Church, from Peter the Apostle.
This is lesson number seven, in this particular series. The title of this lesson, this morning,
is, Beware the False Teachers. And our text is
Second Peter, Chapter 1.
We're studying in First and Second Peter, as we said at the very beginning. This is
essentially Peter's last sermon to the church, last letter that
he writes, that we know of, before his death. And
so far we've said that he makes several key exhortations about the
Christian life. That's what the second epistle is about. In the
last lesson, we studied the first of these exhortations.
And that was, you have to grow or you're going to die. In other words, you have to grow
spiritually. You have to continue growing spiritually or else you will begin to
die spiritually. You can't just kind of stay still, it's a fluid thing.
Spiritual growth is a fluid thing, you have to continue to evolve. And that was the
main exhortation that he makes at the beginning of the second
epistle. He also explains that what fuels this
growth, the spiritual growth, is the ongoing knowledge of God and
Jesus Christ, which has been made possible by the revelation of
God's Word and His only begotten Son. So the point he makes at the beginning is, in
order to grow, the process of growth involves you knowing
more and more of who God is and who Jesus is. And the good news for you
is that God has fully revealed Himself, so you can really know Him. There's no end
to that process. And then, of course, he details how this knowledge of
God is acquired on a daily basis. The kind of nuts and
bolts of how a person gets to know God, and thus continue in this spiritual
growth and development. Peter says that beginning with
one's faith, which initially saves us, we are to add to this
initial faith, moral excellence, and knowledge, and
self-control, and perseverance, and godliness, and brotherly kindness, and love.
We talked about all of these virtues last week. And in the process of
gaining these things, we come into a greater and greater knowledge
of God. Then he concludes that the person who is
practicing these things is going to grow in his knowledge of
God, grow also in his confidence of salvation,
grow in his appreciation and experience of the heavenly kingdom, where he will
eventually dwell forever. The idea is, as you get to know God, practicing these things, you also get a
taste of heaven. And so it's like you get a taste of what heaven is like before you
actually go there. And that's the motivation that keeps you in
this process. Peter, after having said this, he
turns from the future, he's talking about the future, planning for the future growing for the future
so on and so forth. He switches here and he goes from talking about the future
to talking about the present. What's going on now.
Two things that concern the church in the here and now.
The process that he has so eloquently spoken of, that leads to heaven,
begins with faith. And as Paul explains in Romans 10:17, faith,
this initial faith - how do you get this initial faith? Paul says faith comes
from hearing, and hearing the words of Christ, Romans 10:17. So the
word, God's word, this is the source of faith. Peter
wants to reassure them that this basis for their spiritual growth, this
faith, this word, it's solid. You can have
confidence in it. We find ourselves now
in First Peter, chapter one, beginning in verse
12. That's where we are today, that's where we're going to pick it up. So let's read verse 12 to 14.
He says, "Therefore, I will always be ready to remind you of these things, even though
you already know them, and have been established in the truth which is present in you.
I consider it right, as long as I am in this earthly dwelling, to stir you up, by way of
reminder, knowing that the laying aside of my earthly dwelling is imminent, as also
our Lord Jesus Christ has made clear to me." He
confirms that there are not these things that he said to them:
add to your faith, moral excellence, so on and so forth. He confirms with them that these
things are not new ideas. They are ones that they have been taught and known through the gospel, which he
calls the truth. They are things which they've known through the gospel, which is what began
the process in them, in the first place. Peter finds it
necessary to remind them one last time, because the Lord has revealed to
him that he is about to die. I'm writing this letter and I'm
reminding you of these things, because I know that I don't have a lot of time left.
So we go on, verse 15, he says, "And I will also be diligent
that at any time after my departure you will be able to call these things to
mind. For we did not follow cleverly devised tales when we made known to you
the power and the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses
of His majesty." verse 17 he says, "For when he received
honor and glory from God the Father, such an utterance as this was made to him by the
majestic glory. This is my beloved son with whom I am well pleased. And we,
ourselves, heard this utterance made from heaven when we were with Him on the
holy mountain." So this letter, he says, will serve as a
constant reminder after he is gone.
Now he tells them why his letter, along with the other Apostolic writings and
scriptures, that they already have, should be considered inspired
and should be considered as authoritative for them as they
develop in spiritual growth. Giving two reasons, one, he says,
We didn't create the gospel. We didn't make this stuff up. These are not
fables. These are not myths that we're talking to you about. He says,
We were eyewitnesses of Jesus, of His baptism, His ministry, teaching, His
miracles, His death, His resurrection, His ascension.
So he's saying to them, their preaching was not made of fables and stories, but a was
an eyewitness account of the life, and death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. You can have
confidence that what we're writing to you - not mysteries or anything. We're
talking about what we saw, what we experienced, so you can have confidence in the
word upon which your faith is based.
You see the construction there?
And then he says, in addition to this they also were witnesses to His relationship to the
Father in Heaven, having both seen the glory of heaven -
Peter, James, John went up on the Mount of Transfiguration. They saw Jesus
transformed into His glorified body, he's saying, we saw that.
And not only, he says, not only did we see Him glorified,
we heard the voice of the Father speaking to the son.
We're not just making stuff up, we're talking about not only witnessing
miracles and things, we witnessed the actual glorification of Jesus
and we heard God, Himself, confirming that
this was His son.
And so he goes on in verse 19 and says, "So we have the prophetic word made more
sure, to which you do well to pay attention, as to a lamp shining
in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star arises in your heart."
The Apostles not only have the words of the prophets, describing the coming of the
Messiah and what He was going to do,
like he said, we have the prophetic word made more sure, we don't
just have that, we also have witnessed the
coming, and the fulfillment of all the prophecies about Him.
All the prophets had was - all the people had before was the word of the prophets that something
was going to happen, but we have the word of the prophets that something was going to happen,
and we are witnesses that all these prophecies were fulfilled.
Therefore, the Brethren would do well to pay attention to the things written by
them. Meaning, not the prophets, but the things written by Peter and the other
Apostles, as they are giving them instructions concerning their
spiritual development. So this is all about spiritual development. Add to your
faith, moral excellence, all these other things. Keep doing that, if you want to grow spiritually. And don't
worry, what we're telling you, this is solid stuff.
This is solid stuff, based on God's Word, based on the eyewitness, based on the fact that we
saw and heard what we saw and heard. Verse 20 he goes on,
"But know this, first of all, that no prophecy of scripture is a matter of one's own interpretation,
for no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will. But men moved by
the Holy Spirit spoke from God." The prophets, he goes on to
say, they didn't speak from themselves, but they were inspired as to
what they would say by the Holy Spirit. So the word inspired, of course, means
God breathed or God breathing. And so the image that he
paints here is like a sailboat, a sailboat moved along by the wind.
There can be a lot of different types of sailboats, but the one thing that they have in common is
that it is the wind that moves them about.
So in the same way, he's saying, different men, different times, wrote the Bible,
but the one thing in common was that each of them was moved by the Holy
Spirit to write what he wrote. The point Peter is
making here is that even though he and the other Apostles witnessed the life and
the teachings of Jesus, it was by the power of the Holy Spirit
that they and he, Peter, wrote to the church. He doesn't even
depend on his own intelligence or his own mind about what he is
writing. He says, yeah, we we saw that, we saw the resurrection, and we saw Jesus transform, we
saw all these things, but know that the things that we're writing, these things are
inspired, are breathed by the Spirit of God, not we, ourselves.
The point that he's making is that the readers can have
confidence even after Peter is gone.
They can have confidence to be reminded by his words, because these are not just
his words, they are the guidance of the Holy Spirit from God. So have
confidence in what I'm writing here. Even after I'm gone, have confidence in what I've
written you, because what I've written you comes from God.
Essentially, here, Peter is claiming that his writings are inspired. If somebody
says, where does it say in the Bible that it's inspired? Well, this is a good proof text right here.
Peter is claiming his own writings are inspired by God.
That's the first thing that he - first exhortation that he
gives them, reminder. The second thing he reminds them about
in the present, is that they need to be careful for
false teachers. Since the Word is the source of their faith, is the
foundation for their growth and entry into the kingdom of heaven, it will become a
special target for Satan to destroy. And one of his attacks
will be to send false teachers into the church. So he's warning
them, after I'm gone, you need to be - you need to hang onto the word, because it's inspired.
And you need to be careful, because there will be some that will come into the church to
try to teach things which are incorrect, which are false. Let's read
Second Peter, chapter two, now that's where the new idea comes in. He says, "But
false prophets also arose among the people just as there will be also false teachers
among you." So you see, he's pivoting here and he's saying, yeah, the word is solid. What I'm writing to you,
this is inspired. But, he says, be careful. Just like in the past where
they had false teachers, false prophets. Today in our day, he
says, false teachers, false prophets will also try to infiltrate the church. That's the
warning. And, he says, among you - "who will secretly introduce
destructive heresies even denying the Master who bought them,
bringing swift destruction upon themselves. Many will
follow their sensuality and because of them the way of the truth will be maligned; and in their
greed they will exploit you with false words, their judgment from long ago is not idle
and their destruction is not a sleep."
He goes back to the past. Israel, they had false prophets who tried to lure the
people back into idolatry or merely served evil kings
for favor. Well, in the same way, he says, lying teachers will
come into the church to introduce false doctrines. Even denying that
Jesus Christ is God. There is a -
we could do a lot of different examples here, but I pick one called The Jesus
Seminar. If you've ever heard of the Jesus Seminar, every year or every
couple of years a group of theologians, renowned theologians
and thinkers and philosophers come together, it's like a seminar and they
discuss various issues of the Bible and religion. And that
meeting is called The Jesus Seminar. Well, the thing that's unusual and
ironic about the Jesus Seminar is when this group of thinkers is through and they
put out their paper, their results, usually it's to
deny that Jesus is the Son of God, or it's to deny that
miracles actually happened, or it's to under-cut
one of the books of the Bible. In other words, the name is false. It's the
denying Jesus Seminar. And yet this seminar gets a
lot of press when they put out their - not their encyclical, but when they
put out their results. It's covered by newspapers and
editorialists. This is exactly what Peter
is talking about. Teachers, Ph.D.s, supposedly very smart
men and women, come into the church under the
banner of Jesus Seminar. And what do they do? Well, they try to deconstruct the
faith and they try to tear apart the inspiration of the scripture.
All under the banner of academics, all under the banner of well,
we're smart people and we're well-educated people, you ought to listen to us.
Nothing has changed. The same kind of people went into the church in the first century under the
guise of what? Well, we're smart people, we're philosophers.
We know what we're talking about. Listen to us.
This is what Peter is warning against. Peter says that the penalty
now, as it was in Israel for false prophets, will be swift
destruction. So they, the false teachers, he says, may be on
earth for a while, but when judgment comes, their destruction will be sudden.
And it will be final. Now, unfortunately, many will be taken in by
false teaching and lead into disbelief and the life of sinfulness that this
belief breeds. Sinfulness doesn't
just start in a vacuum for a believer.
For a believer, continual sinfulness, a life of sin begins with the
decrease of their faith. As well as
manipulation and swindling that often accompanies false religious teachers. I don't want to go
into the headlines, but how many times have we seen that? Some famous
religious evangelist, or something like that, big TV show,
big this, big that, and then all of a sudden they find some scandal, usually involving money
or sex, something like that, brings that person down and
unfortunately, destroys the faith of so many that that person kind of brought with him.
Peter says that their success does not cancel or mask the
certain judgment that's awaiting them. Don't be fooled, just because the world
applauds, and just because it's a huge thing, and it's on TV or whatever,
doesn't make it true, doesn't make it accurate. The way to
decide is always against this. It doesn't matter that that person's
talking to a million people. Never mind that, never mind the audience. Listen to what they're
saying and compare it to what it says here. If it matches,
hallelujah, great. We've got a believer preaching the truth to a million people. We
want that. But if it doesn't match this, no amount of slick
commercialization is going to make it right.
Let's keep reading, verse 4, he says, "For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but
cast them into hell and committed them to pits of darkness reserved for judgment, and did not
spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a preacher of righteousness with seven
others when he brought a flood upon the world of the un-Godly.
And if he condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to destruction by reducing them to ashes
having made them an example to those who would live on godly lives thereafter."
He stops to make a parenthetical statement. He's saying, God is going to judge
these false teachers and then he says,
And speaking of judgment, and speaking of judgment he
mentions those who were judged in the past as a reminder to those who
thought that judgment for these people was slow or wasn't coming at all.
And he mentions several judgments that took place in the past. The angels, for
example, they were judged and punished for leaving their position and aspiring to be greater than
God, or for not obeying Him, or not remaining in their
position. They were judged. And the ancient world, it was wiped out by a
flood for its wickedness, they were judged. And Sodom and Gomorrah were
destroyed for their sins, as well.
They were judged.
So his point here is, if they doubt judgment and punishment that is going to
come in the future, they should look at the past and see what God did to the
wicked at that time and the punishment that they received,
and let that be a lesson for the future.
Let that stand as a witness for everyone who says, where's the judgment?
Is it going to happen? Look at this. We're going on and on, nobody's hurt. Nothing's happening. Peter
says, yeah, well, take a look at what happened in the past. If God is not afraid to judge
angels, an entire civilization, a city, if He's not
worried about judging those people, don't worry, He's not worried about judging the people in the future as well.
Pay attention, he said. Pay attention. Verse 7 keeps going, "and if
He rescued righteous Lot, oppressed by the sensual conduct of unprincipled men
(for by what He saw and heard that righteous man, while living among them, felt his righteous soul
tormented, day after day by their lawless deeds).
Then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from temptation, and to keep the unrighteous under
punishment for the day of judgment." So on one hand he says, speaking of judgment
and he says, God knows how to judge and He gives a couple of examples of His judgment in the past
and now he says, and God also knows how to save. He knows how to
judge the wicked, but He also knows how to save the righteous.
He deals with both the obedient and the disobedient in
times of evil and temptation. And he gives two
examples: Lot, right. Abraham's nephew, Lot, was
surrounded by evil, but with God's help he was able to resist the pressure
and he was saved from the destruction that eventually came to Sodom and Gomorrah. And then the
others who disobeyed, they were destroyed, but the righteous were saved. He's
saying, God knows how to judge and God knows how to save.
He knows how to do both things. The point for the readers is that even though
they may have to face false teachers and various trials of persecution for
their faith, the same God who has the power to punish the evil,
also has the power to sustain them - the good, the obedient through
trials. This is a passage that I show people who say, you know what,
why should we bring children into this evil world?
Have you ever heard somebody say that. Young people say, I don't know if we should even have kids, this evil
world, I don't know, this is pretty bad.
Of course, if you're saying that today, you're saying that because you didn't live through World War One or
World War Two, it was pretty bad too. I show them
this passage and tell them, the same God who will punish those evil people in
those wars and those dictators, the same God is going to do that. He
knows how to preserve the righteous, as well.
In times of evil, don't lack faith,
just trust in God.
Getting back to our passage, he has already mentioned the way
to be sustained in trial, right at the very beginning. How do we Christians
sustain in times of difficulty? Well, we diligently add to faith, moral
excellence. We add to moral excellence, knowledge, we keep doing what we're doing.
We keep practicing the spiritual disciplines that develop our knowledge of God.
That's what we do in times of trouble. I've said this to you before, what
would happen if the communists took over the United States of America, or the
Islamists? If they won the war and they set up an Islamic
state in the USA. Well what would you do? Well, pretty much the same thing I'm doing now.
Except I couldn't do it openly. We would meet in somebody's house secretly. I'd say, open your
Bibles to Second Peter, any questions?
We'd be secretly filming. We'd be underground. We'd be - instead of advertising
our stuff openly, we'd be underground, it would be secret.
I got a letter from - I got an e-mail from a woman in China
who said thank you so much. That I've just been baptized secretly.
And I had no resources and I purchased a link
to get onto the internet so I could go to see YouTube videos. And I found
Bible Talk on YouTube. And I found Christianity for
beginners, all seven videos. I've listened to them and
now I'm sharing them with my friends.
She is not openly sharing them. She's sharing them secretly with her
friends. So how is she living her Christian life?
In a totalitarian regime, in an atheistic, communistic society, how is
she surviving as a Christian? Well, by the power of God, through faith.
Using the resources that little Choctaw Church of Christ in Choctaw,
America is providing her.
And we would do the same if we were in her situation. Why? Because God
knows how to keep the saved, saved. And He knows how to
punish the unfaithful as well.
So now Peter, beginning in verse 10, he finishes this
chapter with a long description of the character, and the actions, and the
attitude of the false teachers that have always and will continue to plague
God's church, until Jesus returns. He goes on now, in
modern English, he goes on a tear here. He goes on a tear, a diatribe.
We start in verse 10. He says, "and especially those," he's saying
God will judge, "and especially those who indulge the flesh in its
corrupt desires and despise authority. Daring, self-willed, they do not
tremble when they revile angelic majesties, whereas angels who are greater in might and
power, do not bring reviling judgment against them before the Lord."
So he says, these people, these false teachers and what they breed - they're sensual, they're carnal, in
nature, they're worldly and they hate authority - human authority or scriptural
authority. They revile or they blaspheme spiritual things without
fear, without shame. They teach falsely or they ridicule spiritual
things without regard, he says. Peter says, that angels who could
destroy these people in an instant, do not even enter a word against them. In other
words, the angels don't even say anything to these false teachers. Why? Because the angels
realize that the judgment belongs to the Lord. Even though these false teachers
are reviling the angels, the angels do not say anything back. They're waiting
for God to judge.
Great example for us.
It keeps going, verse 12, he says, "but these, like unreasoning
animals, born as creatures of instinct to be captured and killed,
reviling where they have no knowledge, will in the destruction of those creatures also
be destroyed, suffering wrong as the wages of doing wrong. They counted a
pleasure to revel in the daytime." So they are like
animals, he said, who savage and destroy on instinct, but they are doomed to be
destroyed like the rabid animals that they are. Strong language here.
Keeps going, he says, "They are stains and blemishes, reveling in their
deceptions as they carouse with you, having eyes full of adultery that
never cease from sin, enticing, unstable souls, having a heart trained in
greed, accursed children." So these people, he's saying, they're not
confused. This isn't like a legitimate mistake -
they're like mistaken about what they believe or what they think. They're
not like that. He says, they know exactly what they're doing and they're enjoying
doing it. They enjoy their sensual sins, they enjoy
reducing unstable, meaning ungrowing, remember, I said grow or die.
They enjoy picking off the weak of the litter, if you wish.
They enjoy seducing unstable Christians and luring them into similar
sins of greed and sexual immorality. He compares them to
scabs and stains on the fellowship of true believers.
And he says that their motivation is sin and they have no conscience about destroying
a person's faith, and an entire congregation if they have to. These are pretty bad
people. Fifteen and 16,
"Forsaking the right way, they have gone astray, having followed the way of Balaam, the son of Beor,
who loved the wages of unrighteousness, but he received the rebuke for his own
transgression for a mute donkey speaking with the voice of a man restrained the
madness of the prophet." So he compares these false teachers to a
prophet in the Old Testament who also was enticed by money,
to curse God's people, but he was stopped by an angel and the miraculous -
even his own animal spoke to him. He was trying to go a certain way and the animal wouldn't go because
the animal saw that there was an angel there. And finally he starts beating on the animal, this mule, and
the mule speaks, and says, why are you beating on me?
Haven't I served you well? I mean, imagine being rebuked
by an animal.
That's pretty bad. Pretty bad.
His greed, this fellow here, Balaam, his greed eventually overcame him on another
occasion and he died a miserable death for having perverted the gift.
He was really a prophet,
but he used this gift in an incorrect way. He used his gift for money. He was selling
his gift. This is what Peter is referring to. So a lot
of these teachers, preachers, many of them have a gift. God
has given them an ability, but they are using that ability
for the wrong reasons. Verse 17 he says,
"These are springs without water and mists driven by a storm, for
whom the black darkness has been reserved."
So here he pronounces the final end of all such false prophets: past,
present, and future.
The blackness, the darkness, verse 18 and
19 continues, he says, "For speaking out arrogant words of vanity they entice
by fleshly desires by sensuality, those who barely escaped
from the ones who live in error promising them freedom while they,
themselves, are slaves of corruption. For by what a man is overcome,
by this he is enslaved." So Peter explains what
some of the false teachers were actually doing at the time of his writing. They were
telling new converts, these are the ones who had barely escaped,
they just barely escaped destruction. New converts. They were
telling these people that they could be good Christians, but still enjoy their
sinful pleasures as well. In other words, you could have it all.
And the result, of course, was that those without knowledge and
those without self-control would go back to the things that they were slaves
to before being rescued by Christ.
They were doing with - this they were doing, rather, with fancy
preaching in high words that served as an intelligent discourse.
Hey, we're smart, we're educated. Trust us, what we're telling you.
Now some people who study this, some scholars think that what these false
teachers were promoting was the Greek idea of dualism. And in the Greek
idea - philosophic idea of dualism is that whatever is done in the flesh has no
effect in the spirit and whatever is done in the spirit has no effect on the
flesh. That's why they call it dualism. There are two spheres and they don't intersect,
And they were trying to marry this Greek idea with Christianity.
So what you do in one doesn't affect what happens in the other.
But if you buy into this, you can have it both ways. You can sin
without guilt in your spirit, because you can sin in your flesh and not feel guilty in your
spirit. Why? Because they were teaching, whatever you do in the flesh doesn't affect the spirit.
And you could worship God in the spirit without changing anything in the flesh.
Why?
Well, because whatever you do in the spirit doesn't affect the flesh. Of course,
this is false freedom, isn't it?
Peter says, because sin does not set you free, sin
imprisons you to itself.
That's a reality. Ask those people who are imprisoned by whatever -
pornography, or violence, or greed, or drugs. Ask the people who are imprisoned by
those things, how free they feel.
So in verse 20, he says, "For if after they have escaped the
defilements of the world, by knowledge of the Lord and Savior,"
these are the new Christians,
"If after they have escaped the defilements of the world, by the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus
Christ, they are again entangled in them and are overcome.
The last state has become worse for them than the first.
For it would be better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than having known it, to turn
away from the holy commandment handed on to them. It has happened to them
according to the true proverb, "A dog returns to it's own vomit," and, "A
sow, after washing, returns to wallowing in the mire."
So here Peter rebukes not only the false teachers, but the poor victims
who are taken in by their hypocrisy and their doctrines. He says two things - three
things, rather, to them. First he says, if they go back to the world after having known Jesus
and salvation, their second enslavement to sin will be worse
than their first. Little example,
those of you who ever smoked before - I remember when I used to
smoke. Smoked a lot. Really liked to smoke, was my favorite thing.
And then I would quit. I would say no more and throw the cigarettes in the garbage. No more. I'd quit and
I'd be good three months and then I was at a party or something - this was before I became a Christian - I was
at a party or something. You know how it is at a party. How can you not smoke when you have a beer?
They go together. You can't. It's wrong, it's wrong, it's wrong.
Beer, no cigarette, it's just wrong. So I would say, just one
for tonight. Oh dear, that was such a mistake,
because, those of you who have smoked or who - if you quit and then go back - man, I used to
smoke half a pack. Now I'm smoking a pack a day, a pack and a half a day. Well the same idea. That's
what he's saying. If you've been saved then go back to the world. Oh man, it'll be worse than
before. And this time they're suffering, he says, will be accompanied by the
awful realization that they had escaped this thing before and they put themselves
right back in the same position. That's how I felt. I said, "Man, What was I thinking?"
I had this thing beat - three months. I got to start
all over again.
Well, he's saying those who go back to the life of sin, you're going to say to yourself, what was I thinking?
I was saved.
I was on my way.
Second thing he says, it would be better for them to remain in ignorance, because judgment is
worse for those who know better, but they don't do it. And
thirdly, he says, those who do this, they're not worthy of Christ.
Acting more like dumb animals, than spiritual people. Pretty harsh, pretty harsh.
In his warning, Peter points to the false teachers and he reveals that they will be
punished along with those who allow themselves to be seduced by them.
Let's kind of summarize this, shall we, because we've only got about two to three minutes left.
These admonitions were written 2000 years ago, but as Peter says,
these admonitions were meant to be relevant to us today, because
the words are the inspired words of God.
Peter said, my words, they come from God. From these we can draw a couple of
warnings that would do us well today. Warning
number one: stick to the Word. Every heresy, every division, every
apostasy, always begins with the disrespect, the disobedience, or disbelief of God's
inspired word. So long as the Bible, in its entirety,
remains the sole authority and guide, we will always have a lamp to guide our feet
through this dark world. Now we don't always agree about what it says, that's true.
We don't always agree on how to apply things, that's normal. We're human beings, but we
must always agree that it is God's word, and our search always begins here.
And always ends here. Number two: beware of false teachers. They come in all shapes and
sizes. Some are obvious, who use religion as a cloak to gain political
favor, social power, wealth, prestige. Some are like
moles, who spread their false ideas one person at a time in the congregation, in
the church. One of the primary tasks of elders
in Acts, Chapter 20, is to monitor and guard against false teaching and
teachers in the church. Ever notice all the classes we have here, there's always an elder or two sitting in that
class?
You think that's by accident? They're doing their job.
They're listening, they're observing. The Bible even tells us what to
do with false teachers, right? Paul says, "Now I urge you brethren, keep your eye on those who
cause dissensions and hindrances contrary to the teaching which you have learned; and turn away from
them. For such men are slaves, not of our Lord Christ, but of their own appetites and by their
smooth and flattering speech they will deceive the hearts of the
unsuspecting." So watch or identify those who are
teaching false things and warn them and turn away or disfellowship them if they don't repent.
Be careful, false teachers, it's not just somebody - you have to
make a caveat here since we're talking about a false teachers - a false teacher is not just somebody
who disagrees with you. You think it's okay to clap hands while
we're singing Jesus loves me or something, and another person says no, I don't think we ought to do
that. That difference of opinion doesn't make one guy a false teacher.
We may not agree. One Cup - some churches, the one cup,
some churches. We do lots of cups. That doesn't make the person who
takes one cup - that doesn't make them a false teacher.
We have a difference of opinion. And I'm sorry, we're running out of time here, I'd like to say a little bit longer.
Just let me
tell you just this very quickly. There are only two things that you can - if you read through the New
Testament, two matters where someone was declared a false
teacher, because of teaching. One is, who is the person of Jesus?
So a heresy, a legitimate heresy involves who Jesus is.
So if somebody starts - if I get up here and I say what I've been thinking - I don't think Jesus is
really divine. I think He was just a man and He was just a prophet. Whoops. That's
heresy. And the other one is, how are we saved?
That's the other key of heresy.
Target of heresy.
We're not saved by works or good deeds.
We're not just saved because we think, we believe.
And so in the Bible people who mistaught or taught falsely concerning
who Jesus is or how we are to be saved,
they were declared heretics.
But if one person believed that, I don't know, we ought to take communion every day and someone
else said no, we ought to take communion just on Sunday or we ought to take
communion once a month. Is there error there? Yes, we need
to be patient to teach, to arrive at the proper thing that the Bible teaches. I'm just saying we need
to be careful who we call a heretic.
In the Bible, he says that - the false teachers that Peter's talking about - you
can tell them and who they are, because they have a lifestyle that is contrary to the
teachings of Christ and they make an attempt to draw people away from holy living.
And they teach, and their actions create strife in the church.
So, again, we mustn't be afraid to admonish people
and to warn people or if they're teaching incorrectly or if they're teaching falsely.
All right. And then one other thing here I need to put, the method. Yes sorry. There we go.
Stick to the word, beware of false teachers, be careful, pay attention, and the third one,
recognize that God will punish the evil and the disbeliever. And the
warning, here, is what Peter says. The sad thing is God will punish the false teachers,
but unfortunately, He'll also punish the victims.
It doesn't seem fair, does it? But that's what He says here.
Since we have an overwhelming amount of information to keep us on the right road,
Peter is saying, stick with this and be careful of false teachers because they will
be punished and those that they draw after them will also be punished. So pay attention at
all times. All right, well we're going to have to stop here. We'll pick up with Second Peter next week.
Thank you very much.