(Transcribed by TurboScribe. Go Unlimited to remove this message.)

You're listening to audio from Faith Church Indy. This spring we're studying the book of 2 Peter, learning about how we can find our anchor in God during unsteady times. Now here's the teaching.

But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the master who brought them, bringing upon themselves swift destruction. And many will follow their sensuality, and because of them, the way of truth will be blasphemed. And in their greed, they will exploit you with false words. 

Their condemnation from long ago is not idle, and their destruction is not asleep. Bold and willful, they do not tremble as they blaspheme the glorious ones. Whereas angels, though greater in might and power, do not pronounce a blasphemous judgment against them before the Lord. 

But these, like irrational animals, creatures of instinct, can, born to be caught and destroyed, blaspheming about matters of which they are ignorant, will also be destroyed in their destruction. Suffering wrong as the wage for their wrongdoing. They count it pleasure to revel in the daytime.

They are blots and blemishes, reveling in their deceptions while they feast with you. They have eyes full of adultery, insatiable for sin. They entice unsteady souls. 

They have hearts trained in greed, accursed children. They promise them freedom, but they themselves are slaves of corruption. For whatever overcomes a person, to that he is enslaved.

For it, after they have escaped the defilement of the world through the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overcome. The last state has become worse for them than the first. For it would have been better for them to never have known the way of righteousness than, after knowing it, to turn back from the holy condemnation delivered to them.

What the true proverb says has happened to them. The dog returns to its own vomit, and the sow, after washing herself, returns to wallow in the mire." This is the Word of the Lord. Well, I get the fun task of tackling an entire chapter of 2 Peter in about 30 minutes.

And as you heard, there was a lot in there. And I'm excited to actually unpack this with you. But as we look at the task ahead of us, let us ask the Lord for help in this space.

Father, we know this is your Word. We want to hear it and understand it and let it sink its roots deep within us. So may the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, because you are our rock and our redeemer. 

Amen. Well, some movies are so iconic that they transcend time and the cultural moment they were in. And they even affect the language for generations and years after, right? We still quote things that first took place in movies. 

And I bet if I start this quote, you would probably be able to finish it. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, right? That famous scene from The Wizard of Oz where they finally get to Oz. They're turned away. 

And then as they're, you know, faced with this kind of green blob of a voice, Toto, Dorothy's dog, pulls back the curtain to reveal the mysterious thing going on. And I think what Peter is doing here in 2 Peter chapter 2 is exactly what Toto did, right? He is pulling back the curtain for the early church to see what is really going on. So we are to pay attention to the man behind the curtain. 

We are to pay attention to these false teachers that have infiltrated and made a mockery of things within the early church. And so as we are looking towards 2 Peter chapter 2, we need to remember the context of where we just were at the end of chapter 1, what Pastor Jeff preached on last week. That he talks, Peter talks about his own authority, his apostleship, that he was eyewitness to the resurrection, the resurrected Jesus, and he was a witness to his transfiguration on the mountain. 

And so here we have Peter recognizing his own authority and then calling out the false authority of these teachers. So how would you categorize this passage of 2 Peter chapter 2? It's a warning passage. As we unpack it, it's going to sound as such. 

It's going to sound like a warning. And I believe that Peter is asking us to do one simple thing, consider, to weigh heavily, to use discernment. So as we get into this, we're going to consider these false teachers.

And before we get going, let's remind ourselves about Peter, the person, right? One of the apostles of Jesus, one of the disciples. But is he known for being this timid fisherman? No, not timid at all, right? Like he was not exactly shy. He was bold. 

He did not shy away from stepping out on the water to walk towards Jesus in the middle of the storm. He made the bold proclamation about Jesus at Caesarea Philippi that he was the Christ, that he was the Messiah. He tried to defend Jesus when Jesus was arrested in the garden, right, by cutting off the ear of the high priest's servant. 

And in verse 14 of chapter 1, Peter has already mentioned that he sees his time on earth becoming short. And so the reason I bring this up is because as you read and study this chapter, you can see that Peter's kind of at the end of his rope with these false teachers. He is out of patience for these false teachers that have infiltrated the church. 

And so what you hear sounds pretty bold. And I think that is why it sounds as such. So when Peter is leading us to consider, he's leading the church to consider, it comes from a place of love, but a bold love, a love that is willing to call out the evil in the midst of the church. 

And then one last disclaimer. We're doing a flyover, right? We're tackling a whole chapter. There's a lot in here, but this is the 10,000-foot view.

And so there's going to be a lot that we're not going to get really into the weeds on, but this is the week of all weeks to text in your questions to cut for time so we can cover that in the podcast. So that's my one pitch for that. Well, what are we to consider? The first is to consider the source.

Consider the source because they profess Christ with their lips, but they serve the evil one. And we see this mentioned in the first three verses of chapter 2. But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will be false prophets, false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the master who bought them, bringing upon themselves swift destruction. And many will follow their sensuality, and because of them, the way of truth will be blasphemed. 

And in their greed, they will exploit you with false words. Their condemnation from long ago is not idle, and their destruction is not asleep. So Peter introduces where he's going in this chapter by asking the church to consider the source.

Who are they? Where did they come from? And maybe at this point, you, like me, are wondering, why doesn't he just call them out by name? If there are these false teachers within the church, why doesn't he just name them for who they are? And he probably has some false teachers specifically in mind, but this is a circulated letter to the early church, so the specific names might not have been as helpful as categorizing these false teachers so that the church, long after Peter is gone, can identify who these false teachers are. And they're not just an external threat, but they have become an internal threat. Just as Israel, as people, had always had to deal, they always had to deal with these false prophets. 

In this age of the church, the last days, the days that we are still in, there will be false teachers that rise up within our midst. And Peter says they do so secretly, that it's this idea of scheming and smuggling, that they're not going to just come right out and say, hey, by the way, I have a message for you that Jesus did not rise from the dead, right? They're not going to be so bold to the church that it's going to be in secret. And what these men are teaching is not a permissible variant of the gospel. 

It is a range of damnable heresies which lead straight to judgment, right? They're not disagreeing about whether or not God's love can be described as reckless, or they're not debating about the proper use of flannel graph, right? They are, I mean, I know that connected with a lot more of you than probably in second hour, but flannel graph, I grew up on it, all right? But they are denying the master who bought them. And when we read the word master, we might think like, oh, these are false teachers. The master that he's talking about is Satan, but it's the master who bought them, meaning God is the master who bought them. 

So he's actually saying that they are denying Christ by what they are teaching. And we don't know exactly what claims about Christ they are denying, but there's kind of three broad categories that probably fit with these false teachers, that they have denied his work on the cross, that they have denied his salvation, that they have denied that he's coming again in glory, that he's coming back to judge, and denied that he was indeed to be their master and submit to his lordship. And some combination of that, these false teachers are denying the master who bought them, Jesus. 

And so in any case, they are going to bring upon themselves swift destruction. And swift here is not necessarily in the sense of imminent, right, but in surprising or unexpected. It will happen without warning. 

So this warning still carries weight with it 2,000 years later, because it is still coming. It is still going to happen in an unexpected way without warning. So as a result of these false teachers denying Christ and pursuing sin and sensuality, the true gospel is made to be a mockery in their eyes and in the eyes of the watching world. 

One of the biggest turnoffs for people considering Christ is the idea of hypocrisy. Those that claim one thing, but their lives do not line up. It was Gandhi who famously said, I like your Christ, just not your Christians.

These false teachers in their greed for money, honor, recognition, and reputation are eager and willing to convince others to follow them into this foolish pursuit. Peter says that many will follow them. So a crowd is not a sign that someone is speaking the truth.

And in verse three, Peter makes it personal. He says, they will exploit you. You are the object of their exploitation. 

But God is not asleep, Peter reminds us. It's not unlike Elijah who mocked the prophets of Baal saying, hey, you know, cry out loud, or maybe God, maybe your God, Baal is asleep, right? He's mocking the prophets of Baal by joking in that way. And I think that's not unlike what these false teachers are doing with their words and actions. 

They are mocking God by claiming that judgment is not coming for them, that they can do and say what they want, and there will be no repercussions. But Peter reminds them, God is not asleep. Their destruction is not asleep. 

If these false teachers do not belong to Christ, who do they serve? Well, they serve themselves, but ultimately they serve the evil one. Satan has been defeated, yes, but not destroyed to the uttermost yet. And Satan loves nothing more than to mar and destroy the bride of Christ. 

Persecution, physical persecution didn't exactly work. It only made the church spread and grow stronger. And Satan knows, as Jesus knew, that a divided house cannot stand.

So Satan is no doubt at work through false teachers and false gospels in the church of And no doubt at work in the church today. And so if we are to heed Peter's warning to consider, we must consider the source and recognize that anyone who does not profess Christ is not from him. They professed Christ with their lips, right? They at one point probably made a profession of faith, but they serve the evil one. 

So we must consider the source. And second is we must consider the outcome. What we see in this second section is a plea from Peter to consider the outcome, both in history past, the present, and on to the future. 

Because when you consider the outcome, you see that they offer freedom, but deliver destruction. They offer freedom, but deliver destruction. And we see this in verses 4 through the first part of verse 10. 

We didn't read this a moment ago, and I'm not going to read through it right now, but the point is he's giving these examples from history. He gives three examples, but it's one cohesive thought. It's an if-then statement with several ifs. 

And so if you are underlining in your Bibles or circling, if you have these journals that you want to use, I would recommend circling the ifs in 4, 5, 6, and 7, and then also circling the then in verse 9, because these are connected ideas. So the point of this is that Peter is not only reminding his audience of the punishment and judgment on the wicked, but at the same time also how God preserves the righteous. It's a two-fold reminder. 

The first example is the fallen angels, referring back likely to Genesis chapter 6. And the main idea here is he's making a greater to the lesser argument, that if God did not spare the mighty angels when they sinned, but cast them out of heaven and is reserving judgment and destruction for them, how much less will mortal men, like these false teachers, escape the judgment of God. Second example is the flooded world. He gives this example of the wicked world that Noah was in and calls Noah a preacher of righteousness. 

That's not often how we think about Noah. But how could a good man, if that's truly who Noah was, how could a good man keep quiet when he saw others going to ruin? He preached through his actions and persistency to obey the Lord in spite of the circumstances and in spite of the mocking that Noah received. I mean, he was building a giant boat in the middle of the desert, right? So that the mocking makes a little bit of sense, but he did so faithfully. 

And then the third example from history that he gives is the filthy cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. Once again, we might not think of Lot as a righteous man, you know, if we're a little loose on the details, what we remember from Genesis. But the fact that God actually saved him from destruction is proof that he was at least in some critical ways walking in righteousness before God, even though he was surrounded by deep wickedness.

Noah and Lot aren't held up as shining examples of justification and righteousness, but as examples of how God was able to fully punish the wicked and preserve the righteous. And that is Peter's point here, because in verse nine, he gets to the second part of this idea, right? If this, if this, if this, then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials and to keep the righteous, the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgment. Peter's saying, look back on history and see how these two things are true, that God rescued the righteous from trials and secured punishment and judgment for the wicked. 

And then something that, you know, I wish was maybe phrased a little differently, but Peter is very key to phrase it this way. He says that the Lord knows how to rescue the godly, not necessarily saying that he will in all circumstances rescue the godly in the way we would like him to. He knows how, and he can, but it doesn't mean that he always will.

And then the end of this section, first part of verse 10, he says, especially those, especially those who indulge in the lust of defiling passion and despise authority. Those that live licentious lives and despise authority, which Peter has established that he already has, right? These are the people that God is especially reserving judgment and punishment for. As I was like kind of thinking through this whole context and what Peter was doing, I was just, I was wondering like, were there any false teachers in the churches that Peter was writing to that when someone came and said, hey, let's gather the church together, we got a whole, we got another letter from the apostle Peter to read. 

If there are any of these false teachers like, nah, we don't need to listen to that. Nah, we're good, right? Almost like the feeling I got when the report card got sent home to my parents when I was a kid and I knew there was a bad grade on it. Like, dad, you really don't need to open that. 

Don't read the notes from the teachers, right? That these false teachers despise authority. They despise people like Peter because he has the real authority. They're faking their authority. 

And when this letter comes like, no, really, like we don't need to read this, right? That's, I think kind of the picture that might've happened there. Peter's saying, you despise authority that comes from God? God is especially securing judgment and punishment for you. And after the history lesson in the second part of verse 10 through the first part of 13, Peter turns to describing these false teachers in very descriptive language. 

And he does so in this descriptive language for the rest of the chapter. These false teachers are bold, willful. They're not tentative. 

They're irrational animals. They're creatures of instinct. They're born to be caught. 

These descriptions point us to this idea that they are preaching and living in a false reality where judgment is not coming. There's considerable evidence to support the fact that one of the heresies of the early church promoted by many false teachers is that Jesus was not coming back again, right? He promised his disciples on the mountain when he ascended, hey, I will come again in the same way that you see me leave. And yet it had been years, years. 

People had died. If Jesus was going to come back, he would have come back by now. So surely he's not. 

And without future judgment, without the promise of Jesus returning, ethics don't really matter. These false teachers live like instinctual animals in the sensuality and the evil that they pursue. And to believers and to others who haven't been a part of the church yet, it looks enticing in some ways. 

It looks like freedom, right? They go on and on as they boldly blaspheme the God who created them. The only thing they have learned, they have earned is not freedom, but they have earned destruction. Verses 12 and 13, Peter says that they will also be destroyed in their destruction, suffering wrong as the wage for their wrongdoing. 

So the second thing that Peter's saying is consider the outcome. You may be tempted to drift toward a life of freedom, with freedom from morals, freedom from righteousness, live how you want to live, but the only outcome you are securing is destruction. So do not be fooled.

Consider the outcome. And third, he asks us to consider the lifestyle. So consider the source, consider the outcome, consider the lifestyle. 

They chase pleasure, but they live in corruption. We see this in verses 13 through 16. They count it pleasure to revel in the daytime. 

They are blots and blemishes, reveling in their deceptions while they feast with you. They have eyes full of adultery, insatiable for sin. They entice unsteady souls. 

They have hearts trained in greed, accursed children. Forsaking the right way, they have gone astray. He says they count it pleasure to revel in the daytime. 

Daytime debauchery was frowned upon even in the degenerate Roman society that they were in. Even to the pagans what they were doing was ridiculous. Yet these false teachers live for it. 

They revel in it. And he says that they do so while they feast with you, probably hinting at the celebration of feast of the Lord's Supper, that they were using the Lord's Supper as opportunities for drunkenness, promiscuity, and sensuality, that they were deceiving others, that there is no judgment here. There's no judgment coming. 

So live it up. And they are consumed by lust. They have their eyes set on adultery and they cannot quench their desire for sin. 

Whatever they find themselves in is never enough. Can you think of any examples of people who have all the money and influence in the world, they spend it on all the stuff they could ever want, they live lives of sensuality and debauchery and they find actual satisfaction? I couldn't think of a single example of someone who says, yep, I found that point where I was satisfied with what I was pursuing. I don't think anyone ever reaches a point of having enough. 

Whether it's with lots of money or even just with less money, but with more time. It's kind of like how I treat my car volume knob, right? I love loud music. It's just something about me. 

The rest of my family doesn't always appreciate it. And, you know, as I like the song, I turn it up a little bit more, turn it up a little bit more. And then, you know, at one point the kids will get in the car when I pick them up from school and it's blaring loud. 

Like, Dad, turn it down. It's too loud. And I had just become so accustomed.

Hey, I want a little more, want a little more. And that's what it's like to pursue sin as ultimate satisfaction, that we will become accustomed to it and it will never actually satisfy. Peter says that their hearts are trained for greed. 

That they are critical thinkers and strategists when it comes to being a swindler. It's like they were charter members of the original gold gym, right? That they are trained for deceit. And then he calls them, not pulling any punches here, accursed children. 

I like to think that in the original manuscripts, Peter's original letter, that insult was scribbled in bold and underlined several times, right? That they are accursed. They are forsaking the way of righteousness and have gone astray. And then in verse 15, Peter mentions the story of Balaam and his donkey from Numbers 22.

Balaam is the epitome of the prophet who works for profit, right? That Balaam was willing to take money to try to entice God to curse his people, to curse the Israelites. So Peter's point is, is there anything that Balaam or that these false teachers won't do for money? That while, yes, we see in some examples in the epistles that Paul or Peter or others maybe would take offerings from churches to go along their way to preach and plant more churches, but this is something different, that these people are exploiting the church for money. So he's asking them, have you considered how they live? That they chase pleasure day and night, but this is a clear corruption of God's plan that they are living in.

A simpler way to put this is, you will know them by their fruit. How do they live? Does it align with Jesus's commands? Have you considered how they live? And then fourth, consider the reality. Peter invites us to consider the reality because they portray life, but they supply emptiness.

He calls them waterless springs and mists driven by a storm. What do those two things have in common? A waterless well and a dark cloud driven away by a storm. They both promise water and they promise refreshment, but they deliver emptiness, nothing.

Jesus called the Pharisees whitewashed tombs. The outside might point to something beautiful, but inwardly they're wicked and dead inside. 18 and 19, Peter says, speaking loud boasts of folly, they entice by sensual passions of the flesh, those who are barely escaping from those who live in error. 

They promise them freedom, but they themselves are slaves of corruption. Are you beginning to get the picture yet of what Peter is saying? These false teachers are effective in their folly, preying on the new or immature believers and leading them astray. This life of freedom that they're so-called living is pursuing happiness, pursuing personal expression. 

It's actually a life of enslavement. The pursuit of freedom is truly only found in Christ. Everything else becomes an unruly and ungodly master. 

So Peter ends this whole section of lambasting these false teachers with two final thoughts. He ends with a proverb about dogs and pigs. Both were unclean animals and both cannot hide their true nature. 

No matter how many times you wash a pig, it will always return to the muck. And even if the dog vomited because of something that made it sick, something that it ate, it will always go back and eat it again. It's a graphic picture, but it's effective.

Right? This is where he ends. But before he actually ends, he makes one kind of final point in verses 20 and 21. He says some pretty serious things about these false teachers.

He says that the last state has become worse than the first. And then he also says it's better for them to never have known the truth. What is he saying here? Is he saying that they were true believers and that they have somehow rejected the gospel and have taken themselves out of salvation? I think that's what some people would say as Peter is talking about here. 

But we have to keep in mind the context. I don't believe that Peter is saying that these were truly regenerated, reconciled believers in the church. Maybe people who had professed with their lips to follow Jesus, maybe had even been baptized, were clearly accepted among the community of believers, but who were truly never a part of the body of Christ.

They have in some ways professed Christ yet found themselves on a path of wickedness and blaspheming the God who bought them. Through their sensuous living, they have grown hardened and bitter towards the God who created them. And I think this is why Peter is saying that their current state is worse than before. 

Because to truly return to God, while not impossible, has been made much more difficult by the path they have chosen.

(This file is longer than 30 minutes. Go Unlimited at https://turboscribe.ai/ to transcribe files up to 10 hours long.)