2 Peter 2 Discussion

False teachers rarely show up with a warning label. They sound confident, promise “freedom,” and often aim straight at the parts of us that are easiest to bait: lust, greed, and pride. We open 2 Peter 2 and work through it like we always do, outlining the passage, making observations, and pushing toward real-life application so you can spot spiritual manipulation before it shapes your conscience.

Along the way, we dig into some of the chapter’s most intense examples of God’s judgment and why Peter uses them. We talk about the angels who sinned and the word Tartarus, and how that picture differs from other Bible language about the afterlife. We revisit Noah, Sodom and Gomorrah, and the surprising label Peter gives Lot, which forces us to wrestle with compromise, grief over evil, and what it means to be preserved by God when everything around you is burning.

Then we connect the dots to Balaam and the inside attack: when you can’t destroy God’s people from the outside, you entice them to self-destruct from within. That leads to the heart of the warning and the comfort: false teachers promise what they don’t possess, but God really does know how to rescue the godly from trials. If you’ve been tempted to shrug off bad teaching as harmless, or if you’re trying to stand for Christ while feeling alone, this chapter has both steel and hope. Subscribe, share with a friend who needs discernment, and leave a review. What’s one red flag you’ve learned to watch for?

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Transcript

Welcome And Chapter Roadmap

Pastor Plek 0:10

And welcome back to a chapter a day. Keeps the devil away. I'm Pastor Plank, that's Pastor Holland. We're talking 2nd Peter chapter 2, where we're gonna outline it, we're gonna observe it, interpret it, and apply it so you can find yourself in the depths of God, God's word to prevent you from doing the absurd and to just enjoy the life granted to you of godliness in following Jesus. All right, so 2 Peter 2, 1 through 3 is the rise and character of false teachers. Then you got four through 10, God's judgment of the ungodly and deliverance of the righteous. God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into judgment. So it's kind of how much more does this apply. And then uh 10 through 16 is the corrupt conduct of false teachers. And then you got the uh last part, the 17 through 22, the emptiness of doom of false teachers. All right, let's jump in here.

False Teachers And Jude Parallels

Pastor Plek 1:05

What do you see? Observations.

Pastor Holland 1:06

I see false teachers are pretty bad. Bad, bad bears. Bad news bears.

Pastor Plek 1:12

Bad news bears.

Pastor Holland 1:13

And a lot of there's a lot of overlap with 2 Peter 2 and Jude, which we're gonna get to in a little while. Um, a few books away from there, but there's a lot of overlap here. Same topic and a lot of the same language being used, um, same events being referred to. So very interesting.

Pastor Plek 1:31

Yeah, it's kind of wild. I mean, I I love how he brings up uh Balaam. I mean, that's he brings up a lot of yeah. I mean Balaam's one.

Tartarus And Bound Angels

Pastor Holland 1:42

Uh what about the angels who sinned and he cast them into hell?

Pastor Plek 1:46

Right. Like it was that would that be from Genesis 6? Is that the Nephilim and all that insanity when the sons of God took the daughters of men? Could be, yep.

Pastor Holland 1:57

Um and uh the the Greek word here is tartarus for hell. Yeah, so it's different than um Gehenna. Gehenna, Hades, uh, and these are all kind of different names. Um, but Tartarus has its own kind of mythology and stuff. I'd say Tartarus. Tartarus. Tartarus. Tartarus. All right, has its own mythology in like, you know, Greek, Greek myth and stuff like that. So it's interesting he brings up, he uses that name here. But yeah, talks about these angels. Um he's he casts them into again. This is not hell in the future, the lake of fire where Satan and all his demons will be cast in the final judgment. But this is a present place of the dead, a gloomy darkness where they're kept until the judgment, it says verse four. Yeah, what does that mean? And that's different than Satan who is on earth and all the demons who are on earth. So there's some who are bound in chains under the earth, that's where Tartarus is, um, and waiting there until judgment. Then there's others who are on the earth. Satan is called the prince of this world. He's prowling around like a roaring lion, we read in 1 Peter. Um, anyway, you have different types of uh judgments going on for different demonic forces.

Pastor Plek 3:19

That is kind of wild, yeah. Like some get to roam the earth in a sense freely, I guess, and others are bound.

Pastor Holland 3:27

Yeah. And it you it seems like they're bad, like they were the more significantly mysteriously evil, rebellious ones, or maybe the more powerful ones.

Pastor Plek 3:36

Yeah.

Righteous Lot And Sodom’s Warning

Pastor Plek 3:37

All right. What about righteous Lot? Do you ever think of Lot as being righteous?

Pastor Holland 3:42

Well, he ran away from Sodom and Gomorrah. He did. So that's about Okay. Initially, he's not presented as a righteous person because he goes and moves there in the first place. Right. Yeah. Why would you move there? He did well, that's to be fair. Sin city.

Pastor Plek 3:55

Was Sodom and Gomorrah the city that it became when he, you know, split from Abraham because of the feuding over their shepherds? Definitely.

unknown 4:04

Yeah.

Pastor Holland 4:04

It was, I mean, it was already bad news there. And so he was like, you know, I'll be a city kid. Yeah. And it's like, it's, you know, it's taken as a negative of like, whoa, Lot moved there. What is going on?

Pastor Plek 4:16

But clearly it wasn't great for him. It tormented his soul. Yeah. And like, why didn't he leave before that?

Pastor Holland 4:21

Yeah.

Pastor Plek 4:22

And maybe just because, like, you know, his daughters had gotten married, they, you know, like the family was being started. He's like, ah, I can't leave here.

Pastor Holland 4:30

He's not in Genesis, he's not presented, yeah, as someone who's like wicked and evil necessarily, more of like naive. Yeah.

Pastor Plek 4:37

And maybe I probably naive is the best word of just like but clearly he was righteous enough to be tormented. And clearly righteous enough to go and take in the angels and say, Don't stay in the square. You know, and the angels were like, ah, we kind of want to be abused so we can destroy this place.

Pastor Holland 4:50

You know, uh and and then check it out. It says he turned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah um to ashes. He condemned them to extinction, just wipe them off the face of the earth, making them an example of what's gonna happen to the ungodly. Man. Wow. Yeah. So you're just like, all right, what really happens if you die and you don't believe in Jesus? Remember Sodom and Gomorrah? Fire and sulfur raining down from heaven, just destroying you, eternal destroying. It's like that, but forever. That's really serious. I mean, that should make you, if you're an unbeliever, atheist type, you should think about that and go, wow, maybe I should investigate Jesus.

Pastor Plek 5:32

Wow. All right, look at this. Uh, talking about how like um the angels were really bad, and uh look, they are sorry, they're not afraid to insult the glorious ones. Yet even angels who are much proper do not bring a slanderous judgment against them in the presence of the Lord. But these men, like now, like irrational animals. I'm reading that verse, let me go back to ESV. Like a rational animal, creature of

Balaam And The Inside Attack

Pastor Plek 6:00

instinct, born to be caught and destroyed, goes all the way down. 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, they have followed the way of Balaam. Now, when you think about Balaam, you may not have your first thought is in he is a guy uh that wants to um have eyes full of adultery, insatiable for sin, enticing unsteady souls. But the thing you may not remember, remember Balaam, whenever um the king of Midian, Balak comes up to him, he's like, Hey, I need you to curse Israel. He's like, I can't. I can only I can only do what God tells me to do. But what Balaam does do after three times blessing Israel, and Balak's so frustrated, uh, he goes, he pulls him aside and says, Here's how you get him. You you make your women go and entice Israel to have sex with them, then that will bring a plague on them, and that will bring they'll be destroyed from within. The way that you destroy a nation that God has blessed is not from attacking it from the outside, but attacking it from the inside by using their own sin to self-destruct.

Pastor Holland 7:11

Yeah.

Pastor Plek 7:12

Man.

Pastor Holland 7:13

And that so you know, instead of the direct confrontation, it's go go through the women to get the men. Right. This was Adam and Eve in the garden with Satan. The serpent goes to Eve, knowing that if he could get Eve, he could get Adam without a fight, without fighting either of them. If I can deceive Eve, I know that Adam will cave to Eve. Right. Because that's just what dudes do.

Pastor Plek 7:36

So why did why did the plague come with Balaam? The women enticed the men, made them commit adultery, and then that brought plague and it didn't stop until Phineas jams a spear into an Israelite and a Midianite woman who, as they're about to go have sex in their tent.

Pastor Holland 7:52

Yeah. And to which the Lord's like, you're awesome. Yeah. What? You'll you'll make a great priest. Um because he was hardcore zealous about righteousness of God. Yeah. Okay. This is where men need to be. You gotta go, okay, you can't be just given over to lust. Look, look how it says their eyes are full of adultery. Their eyes are full like men today who are just so given in to lust, you are are being debilitated by the enemy. Not only are you sinning and it's bad for your soul, you're also it's going to keep you from the righteous deeds that God

Lust, Greed, And Enslaving Lies

Pastor Holland 8:27

has for you.

Pastor Plek 8:27

All right. So these false teachers are waterless springs and mist driven by a storm. For them, the gloom of utter darkness has been reserved. These are for false teachers. Yes. Peter's really anti-false teachers. I think this is really important. Yeah, they entice by sensual passions of the flesh those who are barely escaping from those who live in error. What does that mean? For 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. Yep. What overcomes a person to that he's enslaved. Um that's kind of going back to a Romans 6, I think. You know, you're a slave to that which you obey. But like, what is this piece here about the false teachers are enticing by sensual passions of the flesh, those who are barely escaping from those who live in error? Is there a sense like that those who are there's this constant barrage of teaching in the world that you can barely escape because you're just like it's so intoxicating to listen to it and to get away from that is super hard. Is that what he's saying? Yeah, yeah. Yep.

Pastor Holland 9:39

Um, and so this whole thing, I think getting to teach the nature of man, the val the value of teaching, the Bible places a huge, super high value on teaching that um essentially a ch a person, a family, a church is going to go the way of what either you know, good teaching, they're gonna go in a good way, or false teaching, you're gonna go to destruction. Right. Like teaching is how the church and Christians are shepherded. For better or worse.

Pastor Plek 10:14

Okay, so then good teachers. So this is like so once you have you've heard about Jesus and you've been warned rightly to then go back to your sin. Uh clearly there's a person that's not saved to begin with, right? Like you've kind of a Hebrew 6 situation, you've heard the word of God, it's been preached, you've been warned, you understood what it meant, but then you rejected and went back to your own sin. Um, it is gonna be worse for you. For it would have been better for them never to have known the way of righteousness than after knowing to turn back from the holy commandment, delivered them. There is a sense that it is better to be ignorant than to hear the revelation of God and then reject it.

Pastor Holland 10:49

Yeah.

Pastor Plek 10:50

And then he quotes, but uh Proverbs, um, what is it here? Uh Proverbs 26, uh the a dog returns its own vomit, uh, so a fool goes back to doing the same dumb stuff.

Pastor Holland 11:05

Yeah.

Pastor Plek 11:06

Um, let's get into nature, man. There's just so much here.

Pastor Holland 11:12

Yeah. Um yeah, we we are vulnerable to um false teaching? Yeah, deception and being led away, led astray by false teaching.

Pastor Plek 11:25

Yeah. Um greed will cause people to exploit others with their words.

Pastor Holland 11:32

Um false teaching, notice it's almost always associated with sensuality and sexual immorality. Yeah, why is that? Everywhere false teaching goes, it's it's attached to some kind of sexual immorality as well.

Pastor Plek 11:45

So I think most people think that like we've been enlightened by the sexual freedom of the 1960s, you know, and now it's like, no, that sexual immorality has always been present. Yeah. Okay, what about um uh just this reality, like that look at these men, look at verse uh 12 irrational animals, creatures of instinct born to be caught and destroyed. What in the world is that? Born to be caught and destroyed. So is this that like kind of going back to a Romans 9 mindset? What if God in his very in his patience made some vessels for ignoble use uh to be objects of his wrath so that the objects of his mercy would more glorify him? Is that kind of where we're going with that?

Pastor Holland 12:43

Maybe he or it's I mean, he's just making an analogy. Irrational animals like the animals they they don't know it, they're just following after. Oh, he's just making a comparison of how these people are acting. There's food, I'm gonna go get it. Boom, they get caught in a trap. Oh, he's saying here, I see. This is how foolish and simple-minded and just led by sensuality these people are people are led by sensuality, people are lit led by their foolishness.

Pastor Plek 13:06

They're they just return to their own vomit when they're not led by the spirit. I think that's the natural nature, natural nature of man. That's the nature of man to be like that.

Pastor Holland 13:14

And then notice verse 19, these false teachers, it says they promise freedom, but they're slaves of, but they themselves are slaves of corruption. False teaching, that's I mean, we're you're free from this. Like the idea of liberalism, of progressivism, it's all about we're we're breaking free from the old oppressive traditional norms and burdens and all that. And in reality, they are slaves to destruction. Um, they're not free from anything. Um, they're they're promising something that they don't even possess. It's good. Yeah.

God’s Wrath And God’s Rescue

Pastor Plek 13:49

All right, let's get into some character of God. Uh, how about God's not excited about false teachers?

Pastor Holland 13:55

Yeah. He uh yeah. All the examples he gives here is less like expressing the righteous judgment and wrath of God against false teaching.

Pastor Plek 14:08

Look, look at verse 4. I the you know, for those people who don't think that God is into hell, for if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to chains of gloomy darkness to be kept until the judgment, if he did not spare the ancient world but preserved Noah.

Pastor Holland 14:26

Okay, he gets into like if he did all these things, he destroyed the angels, he destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, he destroyed the world in the flood. What makes you think he's not gonna burn up people in hell for rejecting him? It's like, man, you gotta realize the holiness and righteousness of God.

Pastor Plek 14:44

I just if by turning the city of Sodom Ghobor to ashes, he condemned them to extinction. Good night. The Lord, and then he says, if all the but then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials. Exactly. Which uh it's interesting because he goes like if the God didn't spare the angels, he didn't boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, but he did preserve Noah, he did preserve Lot, hey, he knows how to preserve you. Don't worry. Exactly. You're gonna have false teachers, just ignore them, move on, trust God.

Pastor Holland 15:09

Yeah. And even though everything might be burning around you, don't worry.

Pastor Plek 15:15

If you trust God, he will save you. He he knows how to rescue you if you're like the only righteous one in the city. Yeah. Hey, you might be the only righteous person in the city. He's got you. I mean, because he mentions Noah. Yep. He mentions Lot and then he mentions Balaam.

Pastor Holland 15:29

I mean, he's kind of doing because we know the story of Elijah where he's like, I'm the only righteous one, and God's like, actually, I got I got more. 7,000 left. Um, but Lot, he really was the only righteous one. Yeah. Noah, him and his family really were the only righteous. So sometimes you think you're the only one and you're wrong, and you just need to make some friends. And sometimes you might be. You let even if you are the only one trying to stand for God, guess what? He you'll be all right, he'll take care of you.

unknown 15:56

Okay.

Pastor Holland 15:56

Don't be afraid.

Pastor Plek 15:58

All right. Um, all

Practical Application And Final Hope

Pastor Plek 15:59

right, let's see. Application. Application. Yeah. So sin to avoid, promise, claim, example, follow, command, obey, or knowledge to believe. What do you got here?

Pastor Holland 16:06

Knowledge to believe. God knows how to rescue the righteous. He is a rescue. We should be, we should have faith in Jesus. We should not be afraid. We should not be fretful, anxious. We just keep on believing in Jesus.

Pastor Plek 16:19

Um, yeah. Hey, sin to avoid, don't be a false teacher or distort doctrine. Yeah. Uh, don't be involved in greed, sensuality, or the exploitation of other people.

Pastor Holland 16:29

Also, don't underestimate false teachers. I think like the whole thing about this chapter is like the seriousness of sin. There's a lot of gravity to this. So it's not like, ah, but it's okay. They're like their heart's in the right place. No, it's not okay. Don't follow false teachers.

Pastor Plek 16:45

All right. What about don't use religion just for personal gain? Yeah. Uh, how about promise to claim God? Uh we mentioned it, but God knows how to rescue the godly from trials. Don't feel like your situation is so bad that the walls are gonna fall in on you. That's just not gonna happen. God's gonna preserve you. Um, example to follow: Noah, be like Noah, preacher of righteousness in a corrupt world, or Lot, be grieved by the wickedness around him. He was tormented by it. And so there should be a sense that you should be, when you're surrounded by wickedness, it should grieve your soul.

Pastor Holland 17:18

Yeah, that's good. Don't return to your own vomit, or after washing, return to wallow in the mire. When you repent, stay repented. Yeah. And if you fall again, repent again. Um, but really like turn away and leave it in the past forever. Don't ever go back to your sin.

Pastor Plek 17:37

At the same time, if you fall back into sin, don't run away from God, run to him. Yeah, he's got mercy upon mercy upon mercy. And he knows how to rescue you. And he knows how to rescue you. He will, he will send an angel, he will send a messenger, he will pull you out of the pit even when you can't get yourself out. If you're truly his, just cry out to him, call to him, say, Jesus help me. He will send uh an extraction team uh into Sodom Gomorrah for you. Amen. Hey, thanks so much for joining us. We'll see you next time on a chapter of the day.