More than Myths and Superstitions

What if the biggest spiritual threat isn’t outside the church but already in our language—lucky numbers, “good energy,” and manifesting disguised as faith? We open 2 Peter 1:16 and confront a charge as old as the apostles: that Christianity is just a beautiful myth. From the Book of Jubilees to modern word‑faith formulas, we trace how superstition dresses itself in borrowed Bible verses and then sells control to anxious hearts.

I walk through Paul’s warnings to Timothy and Titus, why myths flourish inside congregations, and how a Buddhist-flavored “speak it into existence” has been baptized with Christian terms. We contrast that with James’s bracing call to live and plan under “if the Lord wills,” and we name the telltale marks of false teachers—arrogance, greed, and promises of freedom that enslave. Along the way, we look at our own habits: skipped 13th floors, game‑day rituals, and the quiet fear that fate is stronger than the Father.

Then we turn to Peter’s bold line in the sand: “We did not follow cleverly devised myths.” He’s not pitching comfort; he’s reporting reality. The apostles lost status, safety, and, in many cases, their lives—hardly the perks of a fabricated tale. Their message centers on the parousia, the powerful return of Jesus, a royal arrival that once rattled emperors and still unsettles a world allergic to accountability. That hope doesn’t invite formulas; it invites allegiance, repentance, and rest.

If you’re weary of spiritual slogans and want clarity rooted in Scripture, this conversation is for you. Come test messages by the Bible, not by charisma. Trade the pressure to manifest outcomes for the peace of trusting a sovereign God. And set your hope not on vibes or luck, but on the King who will appear in power. If this helped you think more clearly, subscribe, share it with a friend, and leave a review to help others find the show.

Transcript

The Book Of Jubilees And Its Dangers

Superstitions About Days, Names, And Numbers

Modern Parallels: Sports, Luck, And Omens

Myths Versus God’s Sovereignty

Paul’s Warnings Against Myths

Buddhism’s Influence And “Speak It” Theology

Word-Faith Teachers And Misused Scripture

Charge, Rebuke, And Test Teaching

Irreverent Boasting Versus “If The Lord Wills”

Exposing False Teachers’ Motives

Peter’s World Of Gods, Stars, And Horoscopes

Accusation: Christianity As Myth

Peter’s Denial And Shared Apostolic Witness

The Powerful Coming Of Jesus

Why Royal Return Offends The World

Tradition, Focus Groups, And Abandoning Scripture

Story Or History: The Stakes Of Belief

Peter’s Defense Begins

SPEAKER_00 0:26

If you're new here, we're working our way through 2 Peter. And I want to do something a little different today because Peter is now going to change his subject and his shift in thought. I want to set the context for us as it relates to what Peter is going to write and repeat the warning that we find not only for Peter, but the Apostle Paul to set up this warning that Peter delivers, the defense that he will make of the gospel and how it relates to your world and mine today. Our worlds aren't different. Lies are not new. They're just repackaged. And so we want to be aware of this, and I want to set them the context historically as we often do, but take a little longer than normal to do it. About 150 years before the birth of Christ, a collection of legends and rituals and superstitions had captivated the Jewish world. It's called the Book of Jubilees. What made it so dangerous is that it supposedly revered the Old Testament. It would quote the Old Testament, it would interpret certain things truthfully from the Old Testament, but it also taught a lot of error along with it. It imposed upon the Old Testament its own interpretation. It provided additional information that they either guessed at or believed was true. For instance, they believed that Moses received the law to give to the nation Israel, but they also believed, speculated that it was an angel that gave it to Moses and not God, which is the clear teaching of Scripture. They would take the law of Moses and the festivals and seasons and certain days that were to be revered. And then they came up with all kinds of claims and superstitions related to, well, certain days have demonic influence, and certain days are better days, and certain seasons or festivals are more honorable and some less honorable. So it led people into fear, it led people into believing all sorts of mystical interpretations. The Book of Jubilees claimed that fallen angels were responsible for every ailment and every disease, that there was a demon behind every disease. You say, well, you know, we're certainly past that claim. But perhaps, like you or like me, you have watched faith healers on television casting out the demon of arthritis and the demon of high blood pressure and the demon of cancer or whatever. In fact, I remember one uh preacher of a very large church, a prosperity preacher, who had everybody sending their credit card bills, and he piled them up, and it was really a mountain in front of the pulpit, and and then he prayed against the demon of bad debt. I wish I'd sent mine in because maybe it would have helped. I did. Again, the the book of Jubilees would have said, man, he's right on. Demons behind that. Cast him out. They also believed that names, since they certainly can have meaning, but then some names could determine the destiny of someone in life. They might live up to the meaning of their name, perhaps negatively. It taught that certain numbers were blessed. Certain numbers were demonic. They were to be avoided. And you think, well, man, I'm so glad we don't live in that kind of superstitious world anymore. Well, have you ever taken an elevator to a 13th floor? No. Whether it's the Tower of Dubai or the Commerce Center and Comcast Center in Philadelphia, or or it might be the Empire State Building in New York, they don't have a 13th floor. Developers in the last century, when they were developing skyscrapers in the 1900s, they they began skipping the 13th floor because it had this view of a sinister uh uh connection. And tenants wouldn't sign lease agreements on the 13th floor, so they figured it'd be easier to skip the number than lose the contracts. Today, hotels skip the 13th room. Uh airlines don't have a 13th row in American and European airlines predominantly. Ships avoid the number 13. Now that superstition tracks back to Viking or Norse mythology, where supposedly 12 gods were having a feast, and a 13th God showed up, and and that 13th God betrayed their main god and had him killed. So the 13th guest was sinister. Something wrong with a gathering of 13. The medieval Catholic Church picked up on that idea at the Last Supper. You had 12 apostles and Jesus, that's 13. That can't be good. And sure enough, one of them betrayed the Lord and had him killed. So the number 13 is obviously cursed. And the book of Jubilees would say, that's exactly right. That's good preaching. If you've ever been, maybe some of you, uh, maybe some of you are were born on the 13th. You dare to acknowledge that in a crowd. Well, you've got to add to that the problem of certain days were considered sinister. The medieval period, during that time, the church developed the myth that Friday was the most troubled day of the week. They postulated that Adam and Eve sinned on Friday, that Cain killed Abel on Friday, that Noah's flood started on Friday, and of course you have the crucifixion on Friday until Easter, then they'll claim that the Friday before that's a good Friday. But Friday was obviously the most sinister day of the week, and the number 13 the most unfortunate number. So if you're born on the 13th, but if you're born on Friday the 13th, I wouldn't celebrate your birthday. I'd be afraid to light candles. Leads people into fear. You think, well, people aren't superstitious today. I read an article just this last week that surveyed 2,000 football fans who will be watching the Super Bowl this afternoon. A huge percentage of them said they're gonna be wearing their lucky shirt, their lucky hat. They're gonna sit in the same seat, they're gonna go through the same, you know, pregame ritual, wondering, believing, hoping that it will help the Patriots win. It won't. And I know that because I heard that the other quarterback on the other team is a Christian, so he's got an edge. He's got an edge. Now I say that rather facetiously, but it's interesting that 20% of these fans surveyed believed that the game was influenced by spiritual forces. So make sure you pray. You say, Well, I'm not that superstitious. Well, what happens when you break a mirror? Well, you walk under a ladder, or if you spill some salt, or you cross your fingers. If a black cat crosses your path, is that trouble? Yes. Any color, actually, as far as I'm concerned. Some people might call it fate, karma, good fortune, good luck, good energy. I get good vibes. I discovered, by the way, as I was digging into this, that in the Asian world, 13 is not a bad number at all. Number four is. That's because in Mandarin, Cantonese, Japanese, and Korean, number four is pronounced nearly the same way as the word death. That's a bad omen. I read uh some time ago in World Magazine how number four is avoided at all costs, primarily in China. There are regions that have long since stopped issuing license plates that have the number four on them. Their buildings don't have a fourth floor. The article said that new cell phone users can actually receive compensation if they're given a number that ends in four. It's a bad omen. I can help but think. No wonder our appliances don't last. It's got to be related to that. Well, as you can imagine, the book of Jubilees and every other superstitious practice, every mystical tradition, every reinterpretation of scripture that seems like, well, we believe the Bible, but we're gonna impose on it our view. We're not gonna care about what it really means. We might talk about it. We might hold it up, we might open it, but we're not going to follow it. That is a delight to the demonic world. It leads people into fear and confusion, and maybe my fate's been determined by the wrong name or the number or where I live or what day. Maybe I'm not connected to the spirit world right, or maybe I'm not following God according to the right tradition. All of this superstition dismisses basically the sovereignty of God. You're at the whim of fate, you're under the curse of a number. The Apostle Paul warned Timothy to be alert to this. When he wrote in 2 Timothy chapter 4 that people don't want sound doctrine, I think this is true in every generation, but they will accumulate to themselves teachers who scratch their ears. So they turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. It's the word he uses. Superstitions. Well, the frightening implication of that text is that he's not talking about people who are outside the church, but inside. They will eventually wander away from doctrine and pursue myths that suit their desires. I'll give you an example of something happening in our own lifetime. When Peter, by the time Peter was writing the second letter, late in his life, Buddhism had already reached the Mediterranean world, already winning converts with their belief that energy flows and there is a cosmic consciousness. The universe has consciousness. To put it in layman's terminology, the universe is listening. The idea that the universe has knowledge or conscious awareness has now crept into the church as well. False teachers teach their followers to speak words, and those words have power to return to them whatever they're speaking. God might be used in the terminology, but it's the same thing as a Buddhist's universe. So speak the words, and you will have returned to you whatever you're speaking. You are speaking reality into existence, so make sure you tell the universe what you want. If you want to get rich, tell it. If you want to get healthy, speak it. Tell the universe. Speak positive things. Well, that false teaching has been baptized into the broader church today with false teachers like Kenneth Copeland, who said in one of his sermons, you can have whatever you say. What you are saying is what you are getting. If you're living in poverty, it will change what you are saying. You are sovereign in what you speak, you determine. Joel Listein has made this false teaching a best-selling empire. He leads his congregation to make sure they're saying positive things. Say I am blessed. Say I am healthy. And it'll come to pass. He preached on one occasion, words are like seeds. When you speak something out, we give life to what we are saying. And if we say it long enough, eventually we will reap that harvest. I think you'd be surprised to know that that's Buddhism. That's the book of Jubilees. That's superstition. Joyce Meyer teaches the same thing. She says, words are containers of power. So we need to be speaking right things over our future if we expect to have good things happen. We speak over our future. These people evidently listen to each other's podcasts as they're saying the same thing. But just like any superstition that's centuries old, there may be a verse or two scattered in, but then their own interpretation, to suit their own desires, to speak into their lives wealth and health and prosperity and favor, they evidently don't realize that their true textbook is a collection of myths. It is not the word of God. Now, as Paul warns the church further, again, to set up the context here, he writes in 1 Timothy chapter 1 further this. He says, As I urged you when I was going to Macedonia, Timothy, he's speaking to him, remain at Ephesus, that's where Timothy pastored, so that you may charge certain persons not to teach any different doctrine. Now, evidently Timothy would know, would have known who these false teachers were in Ephesus, who needed to be exposed. The congregation warned. He says, charge them, charge certain people not to teach their different doctrines. He goes on to say, nor to devote themselves to myths. There's that word again. Myths. Which promote speculations rather than the stewardship from God, that is the word he's given us the steward. That is by faith. He comes back to the same idea in chapter 4 where he tells Timothy, have nothing to do with irreverent myths. They're irreverent. Why? Because they diminish the power of God. They make God the bystander and the human sovereign. They place us on the throne to determine our destiny, to determine our fate, to find a ritual, find an incantation. It might even be a verse of scripture. And I'm going to claim it for my desires to reverence. Don't say that, well, you're going to move to another city and you're going to start a business and you will make a profit. Say it, I will make a profit. I'll be profitable. James says, don't say that in his letter. He writes in chapter 4, you can't say that you're going to make a profit. You're not sovereign. You're to be submissive. In fact, he writes in verse 14, you don't know what tomorrow will bring. The truth of Scripture leads you to trust his shepherding, not to take control. No matter how many times you say, I'm going to make a prophet, it won't matter. In fact, he goes on to write, instead, verse 15, you ought to say, if the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that, as it is, where instead you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. Irreverent myths are nothing more than arrogant boasting. False teachers are then irreverent and arrogant. They are in danger with God, and they are a danger to those who follow them, and that's why we're having these repeated warnings from the apostolic community to test what they hear to the scriptures. Evaluate the content of the message, not the charisma of the messenger. Remember that using scripture is not the same thing as explaining scripture. Believing in the existence of God is not the same thing as belonging to God. So be warned. Paul further tells Titus to expose these false teachers living on the island of Crete, where Titus goes to serve. Paul writes in Titus chapter 1, rebuke them, these false teachers, sharply, that they may be sound in the faith, not devoting themselves to Jewish myths. There's that word again. And the traditions, commands of people who turn away from the truth, extra-biblical teaching, religious ritual, superstition from pseudo-spiritual teachers who are effectively telling you nothing more than how to get what you want from your genie in a bottle, God. It makes God this rather helpless bystander. As you are under the influence of a number or a name or a ritual or belief. All of this is an introduction to the warning Peter gives in 2 Peter. We've arrived now at the next verse, which is verse 16, to turn there. Remember, as he's writing this, Peter is about 80 years old. He's not slowing down, by the way. In fact, he's full of fire and brimstone. He's going to spend nearly the rest of this letter defending the gospel against these false teachers. He's going to expose them. Some of them are sexually deviant. Some of them are greedy. Some of them are arrogant. Some of them are demonically driven. He's going to pull the mask off as he desires to protect the believer, the character of the gospel, and of God. You might even look ahead to chapter 2, where he writes down in verse 14 that these false teachers are insatiable for sin. They entice unsteady souls. Down in verse 19, they promise them freedom, but they themselves are slaves of corruption. They have hearts trained in greed. Have you ever noticed they're the ones getting wealthy? Off of their followers. Peter's evidently not interested in making friends here. He evidently doesn't care if anybody shows up at his funeral. The age of 80, he's now digging in. Now, I will say this. Sometimes the New Testament letter. Called epistles, letters from apostles. They name people, as I've done. Sometimes they'll name false teachers or people who are trouble in the church, like Diatrophes, or Demas, or Alexander, or Hymeneus, Homogenes. Most often, though, the apostles simply describe them. And I think that's to our benefit because we can insert names, we can insert false teaching that matches their description. Peter's surrounded by it. There were more gods, they said, in Athens than people. When Peter was writing this, there were priests of the zodiac by the thousands. They had the sun shaved in the back of their hair, the back of their heads, their chief god. And when they'd walk down the street, people would acknowledge them. They acknowledged anything and everything, like our world today. No one can be wrong, everyone must be right. And people would, you know, sort of genuflect, and when the priests of the zodiac would walk by, and people would touch their forehead and their chest and their shoulders, acknowledging the four points of the compass, acknowledging that they were similar in their belief of faith in the universe. We might not have priests walking around with the sun shaved into their hair, but our world today is no less devoted to the stars. A hundred million people will read their horoscope in this country sometime this year. Mobile apps, now international, deliver horoscope information, how to determine your life by the stars. It is now a multi-billion dollar a year industry. This is Peter's world, and this is ours. Now to the specific challenge, and this is where Peter now shifts. He is now on the receiving end of the accusation that he is the one teaching myths, that he's making it up, that he's teaching superstition. Now, he's not going to be able to, you know, convince the world, but he wants to give the believer evidence of why he's not. Evidence that we could hold on to as well. Because your classmates and your coworkers think that you've decided that Christianity, well, that's good for you. It's your set of beliefs. That this is, you know, this is your sacred book, but there are other sacred books, just as sacred. This is yours. Good for you. Don't impose that on us. You're just following those superstitions. You're no different than the Hindu or the Buddhist or the Mormon or the atheist. Peter, you're just choosing to believe these myths that you have made up. So what Peter does is deliver a response to shut down their accusation, encouraging the believer. And he takes it all the way through chapter 3. So we're going to dive into his defense and spend the next ten years uncovering it. Now, verse 16. For we did not follow cleverly devised myths. There's the word. When we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. We're not making this up. So it begins with a denial, it includes a declaration, I'll talk about it in a minute. And then it begins a defense. This isn't a myth. The Greek word is mutos. It means a speculation, a fable. Now, fables can be good because they can be used, if we understand their fables, to teach truth or teach principles. You might think of Aesops, what? Fables. I thought of in my study of J.R.R. Tolkien and The Lord of the Rings. I thought of C.S. Lewis and the Tales of Narnia. Fables to illustrate truth. Now, the problem would be if C.S. Lewis actually believed that you could go in a coke closet, enter a door, and have tea with Mr. and Mrs. Beaver. If he believed that, they would take him away to a home for disturbed authors, take care of them. Well, that's what they're telling Peter. I mean, you're talking about all this crazy stuff, about another world, about a kingdom, and a king who's not here. He died. You believe that. That's scary. Yeah, I believe it. But it's not a myth. In fact, Peter says, I'm not the only one. You might notice in this text, for we did not follow cleverly devised myths. When we made known to you. That phrase made known to you is used in the New Testament for preaching, for preaching the revelation of God, for preaching, explaining, expounding on the gospel. So Peter's subtly saying that we, the apostles, are preaching the same message. We didn't come up with this on our own. I would imagine that in Peter's world, they would have been thinking how crazy this gospel is because no one would conceive of someone like the Lord Jesus. And Peter calls him Lord Jesus Christ, Lord Deity, curious, Yahweh, Jehovah. Jesus. The eternally pre-existent God, the Son, became human. He wasn't human, exalted to become God. That's Mormonism. Arianism. He was eternally pre-existent, who at a point in time became man. Jesus, they named it. Yeshua, Joshua, Savior, Redeemer. He's also Christos, Christ. So he uses all the titles here. We made this known to you about him. But in Peter's day, how different Jesus would be. He would be unique from every God and goddess. The Egyptian, the Persian, the Roman, the Greek, Pantheon, their gods and goddesses. They didn't care about people at all. They used people. They would never suffer for people. People suffered for them. The gods of Peter's day were arrogant. They were immoral. They were greedy. They were unkind. They were proud. We're delivering to you the testimony of a Savior who was humble, poor, compassionate, sacrificing himself even to death on a cross. The God's never shed a tear over human suffering. Jesus wept at the grave of Lazarus. John chapter 11. He wept while riding that unbroken cult into the city of Jerusalem, knowing that they would reject their only hope, Luke chapter 19. Then he sacrificed his life for humanity. Romans 5, verse 6. No one in Peter's day, no one in our day would invent that. So the first thing Peter does is deny. He subtly compares his ministry, by the way, with other false teachers. I want to show you this. The words he uses here for cleverly devised myths. That's a subtle statement. It carries the idea of inventing a fiction, inventing a story, so that you, the teacher, can get something out of it. You're going to invent something to gather a following because it'll be good for you. It'll pad your wallet. It'll get you a following. It'll be a great gig for you. Well, Peter's essentially hinting at what do we, as the apostles, get out of this? What did they get out of it? Deprivation, loneliness, difficulty, scandal, imprisonment, martyrdom. They really should have made up a better story. Because if you do a cleverly devised myth, it ought to be good for you. Peter is subtly implying it wasn't for them. And here's the part now of their message. This is the declaration that is giving these false teachers so much heartburn. This is the point of their attack. And he'll come back to this several times in the letter. Verse 16 again. Here's what really disturbed these false teachers. For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you, here it is, the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The words power and coming can be understood grammatically as one expression. The powerful coming of Jesus. You might translate it, his coming in might, his mighty coming. The word coming is parousia. It's a doctrine. It's a reference to the return of Jesus Christ and the setting up of his thousand-year kingdom on earth following the tribulation. Whenever the word is used in relation to Jesus Christ, and is used 17 times, it is always used in reference to his powerful return. Not in poverty, in power. And that was giving the Jewish world, the Gentile kings, anybody who heard this, the most trouble. Peter and the other apostles are preaching that Jesus is coming back. They had to be thinking, no, we just got rid of them. It was hard enough to get rid of them. We had to ignore all this evidence to kind of get past the fact that he came. We had to bribe guards to lie about his resurrection. We could hardly get past his first coming. Now you're telling us he's coming back. That's exactly what the world would be troubled with today. You see, you can go out there today and you can talk about God. And they'll say, that's good. That's fine. You talk about the Son of God coming back in power to reign over the earth and the earth and its population accountable to him, and now you are following a myth. You've gone too far. In fact, this phrase coming in power predates Peter. It's been discovered in papyri and it's used as an expression for the arrival of royalty to a particular city. Peter saying royalty is going to come back to this city. Jerusalem. Set up as a kingdom that will cover the earth and his glory. Like the waters of the sea. This isn't a myth. This isn't an entertaining story that's going to make our lives easier. He's coming back and he will hold all of humanity responsible for their myths, for their theories that deny him, for their speculations that ignore him. Unfortunately, the church in our generation isn't helping much. The Protestant church is turning to focus groups to decide what the Bible says. The Anglican Church is even more confused now about sexuality, as is the American Church. The Catholic Church has long since abandoned the authority of Scripture for dogma and church tradition. Even the Jewish people today have rejected much of the Old Testament and don't believe the New Testament, of course. I remember years ago preaching through the book of Esther, and I decided to call a rabbi. Back then we had something called the Yellow Pages. Not yellow because they were old, but it was, you know, the yellow pages. I finally found a synagogue and got a rabbi on the phone, and I just wanted to know their historical understanding of Esther and what they thought as a nation of it. He told me that he didn't believe it was true. It was just a story. It was a fable to encourage the Jewish people. Peter is accused of following a story, a superstition. You can't believe that stuff about Christ actually coming back, can you? I mean, seriously. Setting up a kingdom. Jerusalem as the headquarters. I mean. Peter denies their accusation, repeats the declaration, then he lays out his defense. His defense is multifaceted, but it will change Saul into Paul, a persecutor into a defender. It's the same defense that turns a coward like Peter, who wilts at the servant girl's accusation that he follows Christ into this courageous leader, preacher, who will stare the Sanhedrin down when they tell him to be quiet, and he will say, I will obey God and not you. That's quite a change. It's the same thing that changes your heart and mind into believing, in fact, longing for the soon appearing of our blessed God and Savior, Jesus Christ. Because of a superstition, because we've, you know, we've you know thrown our lot in on this fable. Peter will begin his defense with what changed his life, encouraged his heart, and he gives it to them. And we will begin looking at his defense next Lord's day.