Is It Fake?

2 Peter | 2 Peter 2:10b-22

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

My wife and I and our three boys, uh, we we really love family movie nights. Uh we try to, if we can, find one evening per week where we maybe get takeout for dinner or we get a special treat or a special dessert or something, and we set up camp in the basement and try to find a movie to watch together as a family. But as much as we enjoy doing that, there are many times when it's hard to find one that everybody wants to watch. Maybe you can relate to that. Our boys are 12, 9, and 6, so they don't always want to watch the same thing. They might not always be interested in the same thing. Um, and my poor wife can only watch so many karate kid movies before she hits her limit. Uh, so we oftentimes struggle to find something that everybody wants to watch. And a few weeks ago was one of those times. We sat down in the basement and tried finding a movie worth watching. We couldn't settle on anything, so we decided in the moment in the moment to kind of pivot and maybe just try to find a show that was lighthearted and good for us to watch together as a family. And we stumbled upon a show called Is It Cake? Maybe you've seen it before. It's a baking competition where all these professional bakers have to make cakes uh that blend in with items that are not cake, and then these celebrity judges come in and they look at all of them and they try to have to try to identify which one of the items is made of cake. It's riveting, you should check it out. Um but one of the bakers selected a statue of a crow and then had to make a cake that looked identical to that crow. And then when he finished it, he placed it next to four other statues of crows, and they all looked exactly the same. And then the judges had to try to identify which one of them was cake. Another baker selected an alabaster doll, something really intricate and difficult. And she made a cake that looked just like it, and then placed it in between these other dolls, and they had to identify which one was cake. And then during another part of the show, the bakers themselves could win more money if they could identify cake from items that weren't. And so uh one of them had to look at like six different doors, like actual full-size doors that you could open up and walk through. And one of them was actually made of cake, and they had to try to identify which one. Uh and I'll tell you, if you've never seen the show before, it's not as easy as it sounds to identify which one of the items is cake. The bakers are incredible at what they do, and very often people, the judges, they get duped and they guess wrong, and very often we got duped from home, as we were trying to guess, we would guess wrong as well. But one of the fascinating things about this show is to kind of watch the process that the bakers go through to use ingredients and decorations to make sure that these cakes look as convincing as possible so that everybody watching will be fooled by their artistry. And that kind of deceptive artistry, it's lighthearted and it's fun and it's innocent when we're talking about baking competitions, but it's far more serious and dangerous when it comes to the deceptive artistry that fools people of false teachers in the Christian church. We've been in this series in the book of 2 Peter for a number of weeks now, and we have seen this topic of false teaching come up again and again in this letter, and that is because the conditions on the ground at the time that motivated Peter to write this letter before he died were conditions of rampant heretical teaching. So, as we've already established in this series, the churches throughout Asia Minor that Peter was writing to, they had been infiltrated by false teachers whose deceptive artistry was confusing Christians in the first century. And everything that Peter wrote in this letter is directly connected to that reality. But the first half of chapter two, which Andrew covered last week, that's that's the first time in the letter that Peter directly mentions these false teachers. And just as a reminder, he opens up chapter two by saying this 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 bought them, bringing upon themselves swift destruction. And many will follow their sensuality, and because of them the way of truth will be blasphemed. So again, remember the specific heresy that they were preaching that was contradictory to the apostles' teaching was that they were denying a future return of Jesus, and they were denying a future judgment day. And because of that, they were openly encouraging Christians to just live their lives without any biblical boundaries. The logic, their logic promoted a sinful and licentious lifestyle because if Jesus is gone forever, if he's never coming back, and if there's no future judgment day for sinners at the end of history, and if you don't actually have to answer to God in any real way for how you live your life, then nothing is off limits. Just embrace your sensual desires. Embrace your greedy flesh. Don't bother practicing any Christian restraint. Pretty much anything goes as long as it makes you happy. That's all that matters. And so, as Andrew showed us last week, Peter spends the first half of chapter two telling his readers that these false teachers will not ultimately get away with this. They will not go unpunished. A day of judgment is coming, and the Lord will execute justice on these con artists once and for all, and they will be held accountable for all of the spiritual damage that they caused. So that's kind of the first half of chapter two that Andrew talked about last week. But he doesn't stop there. Peter goes on in the second half of this chapter to give a more thorough description of these false teachers. He kind of explains how they think, he explains what makes them tick, and even some of the techniques that they use, all of which is very important for us to understand. But before we officially dive into today's passage, I want to preface it just by saying this. Depending on your personality, you may read a passage like what we just heard read this morning from 2 Peter chapter 2, and you may not like it very much. You might think Peter is just being over the top, and he's being a little bit extreme. You might think he's harsh or mean, or that he kind of just sounds like one of those angry, fire and brimstone preachers who bang their hand on what is this thing? A podium. I couldn't think of the word. Bang their hands on a podium. But I want to submit to you this morning that if we do feel that way, it is not because Peter is being too extreme, it is because we are being too casual. False teaching is far more serious than we dare to think about. Far more serious than we really want to think about. In fact, some scholars estimate that as much as 25% of the New Testament deals with false teaching in some way. So that's one out of every four pages on average, which means if heresy and false teaching is the only thing we ever talk about, then we probably should take a beat and take a breath and step back a bit, because 75% of the New Testament deals with other matters. But it also means if heresy and false teaching is something we never talk about, then we're not actually being biblical. Because one out of every four pages is a significant average. The apostles went out of their way to deal with these matters a lot because they, more so than anybody else, understood how much is at stake. They understood that the Church of Jesus Christ cannot afford to be casual about false teaching because bad theology destroys people's lives both now and for eternity, so the stakes literally could not be any higher. And that being the case, I am going to somewhat match Peter's tone this morning. Because this is very serious stuff. Far more serious than we dare to think about. And on top of that, I'm actually going to take a page out of the Apostle Paul's playbook a little bit later on in the sermon. I'm even going to name some names this morning of dangerous false teachers in our day, because Paul was not afraid to call out people by name who presented danger to the church. Individuals like Hymeneus, Alexander, Philetus, Demas, Diotrephes, and others, these are names that mean nothing to us today, but these were men that early Christians knew of, and Paul explicitly warned them against these people in his letters. Which means when somebody presents a danger to Christians, it is not only appropriate, but actually necessary to say so and to not be afraid to name names when that's needed. Now, as we walk through our passage this morning, we're going to do so a little bit differently than usual. So most of you know by now that on the Sundays when I preach, I really like to typically separate our passage into sections and then just kind of walk methodically through each section one at a time. But as you heard from our scripture reading this morning, these verses are very wordy with a lot of bizarre language, and it would be very easy to get lost in the weeds this morning in the limited amount of time that we have together. So, in order to avoid that, here's what we're gonna do. In keeping with the analogy of is it cake, I want to identify seven ingredients from this passage that Peter says can be found in a false teacher. So if you're a mom, if you're a mom who likes to bake, I guess this is Mother's Day passage, but uh there's definitely more than seven that we could talk about, but I do think there are roughly seven ingredients from this passage specifically that pertain to these false teachers who were fooling people with their deceptive artistry. And so we're just gonna walk through these ingredients one by one together this morning. So we'll go ahead and dive in. Ingredient number one bold arrogance that is unafraid of blasphemy. Bold arrogance that is unafraid of blasphemy. In the second half of verse 10, Peter says, bold and willful, they do not tremble as they blaspheme the glorious ones. Now, there's a lot of debate among Greek scholars as to what exactly this means, because no one's really quite sure what Peter means when he says the glorious ones. Some people think he's referring to angels, others think he's referring to fallen evil angels. Others even think that he might be referring to faithful pastors of churches, which I kind of like because I think Andrew and I should be called the glorious ones. But it's tough to say for sure. Most likely he's referring to angelic beings of some kind, okay? Most likely. But even still, Peter does not tell us what exactly these people were saying about angelic beings that was so blasphemous and dangerous, but he does say in verse 12 that they were blaspheming about matters of which they are ignorant. In other words, they were boldly, arrogantly, and even ignorantly spreading blasphemous ideas without any fear or trembling. They had a certain level of hubris about them, which made them spread heresies with just bold confidence, with zero concern about having to stand before the Lord someday over what they were teaching. So when Paul in Philippians chapter 2 says to work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, the idea of having fear or trembling before the Lord couldn't be further from the minds of these individuals. They speak blasphemous, false theology with a level of smugness and egotism that leaves them completely unafraid of God's wrath or God's judgment. They simply do not care if they are misrepresenting the Lord and his heavenly hosts. Ingredient number two operating according to sinful instincts. Operating according to sinful instincts. In verse 12, Peter says they're like irrational animals, creatures of instinct, born to be caught and destroyed. See, animals don't operate with a moral framework of any kind. They don't stop before doing something and making a decision to ask themselves if this is a good moral decision to make. They just operate solely on their animal instincts. They do whatever comes naturally to them without questioning whether or not this is a good moral decision. And in a similar sense, Peter says these false teachers do not operate within a spiritual framework. They don't ask the question before making a decision whether or not this is a spiritually appropriate thing to do. They're just operating solely off of their sinful instincts of their flesh that come naturally to them as people who are actually spiritually dead and separated from God. In Ephesians chapter 2, Paul says this to the Christians in Ephesus You were dead in your trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the flesh and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. So according to Paul, before coming to Christ, every single person is spiritually dead, and lives according to the desires of the flesh, unless and until we are born again by the power of the Holy Spirit, and we are given that spiritual resurrection that results in us walking in newness of life. And if that is true for every non-believing person, Peter is emphasizing that it's even more true for false teachers who claim to know Jesus, but are leading people astray with their heretical teaching. They are completely guided by their sinful instincts, and just like animals, they do not care about resisting the desires of the flesh. Ingredient number three deceiving in broad daylight. Deceiving in broad daylight. Verse 13. They count it pleasure to revel in the daytime. They are blots and blemishes, reveling in their deceptions while they feast with you. So again, these false teachers are so bold and so arrogant that they don't even really feel the need to be careful. They just practice their deceit out in the open for everyone to see. And don't get me wrong, that doesn't mean that they're not uh that they're not good at what they do. They are experts in deceptive artistry. They are very good at what they do. They are very good at fooling people, but they're so good at it that they don't even feel like they have to hide it or do it in secret. They practice their deception out in the open for everybody to see. In fact, Peter says they count it pleasure to revel in the daytime, which means not only do they not even try to hide it, but they actually derive pleasure from doing this in broad daylight. They love the big stage. They love the big platform, they love the bright lights, they find it exciting and exhilarating to revel in their falsehood and lead people astray completely out in the open for the world to see. They do not care what discerning Christians think of them because they know they'll be able to deceive plenty of people without having to hide in the shadows. Ingredient number four. Hunting for vulnerable people to take advantage of. Hunting for vulnerable people to take advantage of. Verse 14 says, They have eyes full of adultery, insatiable for sin. They entice unsteady souls, they have hearts trained in greed. And then in verse 18, he also adds this speaking loud boasts of folly, they entice by sensual passions of the flesh those who are barely escaping from those who live in error. See, false teachers are experts in finding and attracting vulnerable people that they can exploit and use for their own purposes. And apparently, the individuals that Peter was talking about specifically were particularly good at targeting people through sexual temptation, which is why he mentions adultery and sensual passions. But the truth is there are plenty of other ways to hunt for vulnerable people that don't necessarily include sexual sin. We see this kind of behavior from famous televangelists all the time. If you want to be healthy and wealthy and prosperous, make sure you send your donation to our ministry so that the Lord can bless you. But don't just stop with one. God really wants to test your faith, so make sure you really trust Him and just keep sending us money and show the Lord that you have faith, and someday you will prosper. Your harvest is coming. Hundreds of millions of dollars are donated to so-called ministries like that every year, because vulnerable people who are hurting and struggling want God to bless them. And so they get exploited and taken advantage of by loud-mouthed preachers who love to entice unsteady souls. This is why in verses 15 and 16, Peter compares false teachers to the prophet Balaam. Because in the book of Numbers, Balaam was willing to accept payment from King Balak to curse Israel, and even though God intervened and wouldn't allow him to do it, he is still seen as a negative figure from the Old Testament who loved gain from wrongdoing. And false teachers are seen as those who follow the way of Balaam. They love gain from wrongdoing. They do not care about people, they use people for their own gain. Ingredient number five. Lifeless and empty teaching. In verse 17, Peter says they are waterless springs and mists driven by a storm. In the ancient world, when people would often travel long distances on foot in very hot temperatures, springs were seen as important sources of hydration and refreshment. So the idea of a waterless spring is meant to conjure up images in the mind of the reader of traveling through blistering heat and difficult terrain for an extended period of time, and you see something off in the distance that has the initial appearance of a refreshing spring. And so you make your way toward it with the expectation of hydration and nourishment. But when you get there and you look more closely, you discover it is dry and empty and waterless. What you had expected to be a source of life and sustenance is actually empty and lifeless. Peter is saying that that is what the teaching of these con artists is like. It has the appearance from something far away, but you get closer and you look at it and it's dry and empty and lifeless, and there's no real nourishment to offer. In fact, rather than providing life and sustenance, they're like mists driven by a storm, he says. In other words, whenever a new fashionable ideology comes storming through culture, false teachers get swept up like a mist because they are not properly rooted in biblical truths, so they're just easily blown around by any wind of false doctrine that sounds desirable or fashionable at any given time. They do not care about actual life-giving truth. They promote dry, empty theology. Ingredient number six promising freedom while personally imprisoned. Promising freedom while personally imprisoned. Verse 19 says, They promise them freedom, but they themselves are slaves of corruption. For whatever overcomes a person, to that he is enslaved. So use this imagery and just imagine for a moment that you're a prisoner and you just got transferred to a new prison, and upon arrival you meet a fellow prisoner who is very charming. He or she is very well spoken. They seem to have a lot of influence in the prison, and other prisoners look to them for answers. And eventually this individual tells you, I know how to get you everything you want. Just stick with me, follow me, and you'll be free. And so day after day, you follow their lead on pretty much everything. You spend as much time with them as possible, you're with them in the cafeteria, you're with them in the prison yard, you're with them whenever possible, and you just soak up as much as you possibly can. And it goes on like this for quite some time until one day your attorney pays you a visit. And it turns out that you are eligible for an early release. But instead of being excited about that news, you look back at your attorney and you say, Actually, I've made a good friend in here, and they have helped me to see I don't need to get out. In fact, they've helped me to see that I am more free than I have ever been. And if I just keep doing what I'm doing, I'll experience more and more freedom all the time. But despite that level of enthusiasm, your attorney, if they're a good one, looks back at you and says, You do realize your friend that's promising you freedom is personally imprisoned, right? This is the kind of scenario Peter is trying to paint here. False teachers are personally imprisoned. They are enslaved to their corrupt desires. They're enslaved to their sinful flesh. And meanwhile, they gallop around promising freedom to anyone who will join them in their imprisonment. They do not care about true biblical freedom. They just want as many people as possible to be enslaved alongside them. Lastly, ingredient number seven, reverting back to pre-Gospel behavior. Reverting back to pre-Gospel behavior. Verses 20 through 22, Peter says, For if after they have escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they again, they are again entangled in them and overcome, then 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 commandment delivered to them. What the true Proverbs says has happened to them. The dog returns to its own vomit, and the sow, after washing herself, returns to wallow in the mire. See, very often men and women who become false teachers did not start out that way. Very often these are people who, when they made a, when they first made a profession of faith in Jesus, it seemed like it was sincere. As Peter puts it, it initially seemed like they had escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge of Jesus. They professed faith, they joined a church, they started serving alongside other believers, they looked the part, they sounded the part, but slowly over time, what initially had that appearance of sincere faith proves to be superficial faith. Because rather than growing in Christ-likeness and surrendering themselves to Scripture and to the Holy Spirit, they revert back to pre-gospel behavior and they get entangled in sin and licentiousness all over again. But this time they do it inside the church rather than outside the church. There are some people who, when their faith proves to be superficial and they just fall away, they fall away completely and they leave the church behind and they're just kind of done with it entirely and they walk away. But that's not what false teachers do. What they do is remain in the church and gain influence in the church and twist scripture to enable themselves and others to embrace old behaviors without any need for repentance. And Peter says that they do so like a dog returning to its own vomit or a pig returning to its own muck. And honestly, verse 21 might be the most terrifying verse in this entire passage. 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 commandment delivered to them. Which means, due to the fact that these false teachers heard some form of the gospel and then proceeded to join the church and then proceeded to turn back to their sin and also convinced other believers to do that as well through their blasphemous and heretical teaching. Because of that, Peter says the judgment that is reserved for them on the last day is worse than what it would have been if they had just never professed faith and never joined the church and never led anybody else astray. So those are the seven ingredients that Peter gives us in this passage that specifically pertain to these false teachers who were fooling people with their deceptive artistry. Bold arrogance, that is, unafraid of blasphemy, operating according to sinful instincts, deceiving in broad daylight, hunting for vulnerable people to take advantage of, lifeless and empty teaching, promising freedom while personally imprisoned, and reverting back to pre-gospel behavior. Happy Mother's Day. But listen, if we wanted to just step back for a moment from these seven ingredients and just kind of try to summarize what all false teachers do in one way or another. I think we could say this. False teachers sell fake freedom. False teachers sell fake freedom. So instead of asking, is it cake? Wise and discerning Christians should be asking, is it fake? Is the kind of freedom that is being preached to me true biblical freedom, or is it fake freedom? Is it freedom from the sinful desires of my flesh, or is it freedom to indulge the sinful desires of my flesh? Is there an emphasis on the grace of God that empowers repentance and walking in newness of life, or is there an emphasis on counterfeit cheap grace that excuses sin and keeps you entangled in it? We should be asking the question, is it fake? Because false teachers sell fake freedom. For example, prosperity preachers are selling fake freedom. Popular televangelists like Kenneth Copeland and Joel Osteen and T.D. Jakes, Creflo Dollar and Benny Hinn, and many others are all promoting false theology. Paula White, who serves as the senior faith advisor to President Trump, promotes false theology. All of these individuals teach some form of the unbiblical idea that if you just believe in Jesus and you have enough faith, you will be healthy and wealthy and prosperous in this life. They tap into humanity's love of money and they promise things that the Bible never actually promises. They promise things that the apostles themselves must have missed the memo about because most of them lived through pain and poverty and then were put to death for following Jesus. These false teachers completely conflate love of Jesus with love of stuff and love of comfort, and they encourage Christians to just treat God like this cosmic vending machine who's supposed to endlessly dispense goodies to people who have enough faith. Progressive Christianity is also selling fake freedom. Pastors and influencers like Brandon Robertson and Matthew Vines and Zach Lambert and Jen Hapmaker and Ben Kramer and many others are promoting false theology. All of these individuals teach some form of the unbiblical idea that LGBTQ ideology is not only permissible but should be celebrated and embraced by Christians. They completely distort the love of God. And they say that the only way to love somebody is to support their lifestyle and affirm their claimed identity, and they constantly twist scripture to fit that ideology that they've already embraced rather than submitting every ideology to the truth of Scripture. And I've said this before, and I'll say it again. I have nothing but love and sympathy and compassion for individual persons who struggle with same-sex attraction and confusion about their gender. I'm even thinking of specific names and faces right now as I say that. And I truly want nothing more than gospel healing and spirit-filled freedom for those people. But for the teachers and influencers who promote that theology and who reinforce confusion and who approve of desires that are contrary to God's word, for them I have nothing but indignation because bad theology destroys lives both now and for eternity. The stakes are too high to be casual about this. We must call it out and expose it for what it is, even if it means being falsely labeled as mean for doing so. One of the voices within progressive Christianity right now that's becoming more and more influential by the day is a man named James Tallarico. He's a politician in Texas, and he is regularly promoting theology, and he's very well spoken, and he's very dangerous with the theology he's promoting. And there's tons of clips on him that are viral online right now, which you could easily find. But in one of them that I watched, he was being interviewed on a podcast, and he's trying to make the argument for why Christians are supposed to be pro-abortion and pro-choice. And in doing so, he claims that in Luke chapter 1, the angel Gabriel deliberately honored Mary's right to choose. He says, Go and read Luke chapter 1 for yourself. It couldn't be more clear, just go and look at it. The angel Gabriel honors Mary's right to choose. To which I would say, yes, please go read it for yourself. Because if you do, you'll discover that's not at all what happened. What actually happened is that the angel informed Mary what was going to take place, and then Mary responded in humble obedience to God's plan. But just for the sake of argument, let's just pretend for the sake of argument that Talarico is right, okay? He's not. But let's pretend for just a second that he's right. Even still, if he were right, at this point in the story, Mary was not pregnant yet. She had not yet conceived, which means even if he's right, the very most he could try to claim from that passage is that Mary was consenting to the idea of becoming pregnant. She wasn't pregnant yet, but maybe she was agreeing to become pregnant, okay? But then what if she changed her mind later? What if after becoming pregnant with Jesus, Mary had a change of heart and she didn't want to go through with the pregnancy anymore? In that case, is Tallerico suggesting that the Lord would have honored Mary's right to choose to abort the Son of God? Is he prepared to make that claim? Because based on his progressive ideology and his way of thinking, I think he'd be just fine drawing that conclusion, which is completely astonishing to me. But astonishing as it is, these kinds of conclusions, this is what people do when they are constantly trying to twist scripture to fit the ideology that they have already decided to embrace, rather than submitting every ideology to the enduring truth of Scripture. I could go on and on and name more, but I think you get the point. False teaching is far more serious than we really care to think about. But the truth is, apart from the grace of God, every single one of us is susceptible to embracing bad theology. Apart from the grace of God, we are all in danger of adopting false doctrine, which is why the following words from Paul in 1 Corinthians chapter 6 are so comforting. He says, Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived, neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. See, apart from the grace of God, many of the sinful vices that plague this fallen world and that are promoted by false teachers were also true of us. But for those of us who repent and believe the true biblical gospel, although we will still always struggle with sinful flesh, we know that we've been washed by the blood of Jesus. We've been washed by the one who, rather than having bold arrogance, that is unafraid of blasphemy, humbled himself as a servant and always spoke on behalf of his father. The one who, rather than operating according to sinful instincts, was tempted as we are, yet without sin. The one who, rather than deceiving in broad daylight, sacrificed himself on a cross in the middle of the day. The one who, rather than hunting for vulnerable people to take advantage of, was a place of safety and security for the weak and the hurting. The one who, rather than offering lifeless and empty teaching, came directly from heaven as the way, the truth, and the life. The one who, rather than promising freedom while personally imprisoned, set sinful captives free while being wrongfully murdered. And the one who, rather than reverting back to pre-gospel behavior, came to fulfill the gospel that was promised generations earlier. We have been washed, sanctified, and justified in the name of the Lord Jesus. But wise and discerning Christians should regularly be asking, is it fake? Is the kind of freedom being preached to me true, biblical freedom, or is it fake freedom? Is it freedom from the sinful desires of my flesh or freedom to indulge the sinful desires of my flesh? There is way too much at stake for Christians to be casual about false teaching. Bad theology ruins lives now and for eternity. So the church needs to always remember in every generation that false teachers sell fake freedom.