Sketching False Teachers (Part A)

What if you had a co-worker who needed the gospel but you didn't like them? Would you withhold the gospel from them?

What would happen to you if you did such a stupid thing as that? Well, what happens when we have our pulpits filled by people who don't want to tell the truth about God because it won't line their pockets, it won't populate the seats in the sanctuary? That is corruption and it should not be tolerated by true believers. Pastor Rick is currently teaching through the book of 2 Peter.

Please stay with us after today's message to hear more information about Cross Reference Radio, specifically how you can get a free copy of this teaching. But for now, let's join Pastor Rick in the book of 2 Peter 2 as he begins a new message called Sketching False Teachers. These, like brute beasts made to be caught and destroyed, speak evil of things they do not understand and will utterly perish in their own corruption and will receive the wages of unrighteousness as those who count it pleasure to carouse in the daytime. They have spots and blemishes carousing in their own deceptions while they feast with you, having eyes full of adultery that cannot cease from sin, enticing unstable souls. A heart trained in covetous practices and are accursed children, they have forsaken the right way and gone astray, following the way of Balaam, the son of Beor, who loved the wages of unrighteousness. But he was rebuked for his iniquity, a dumb donkey speaking with a man's voice restrained the madness of the prophet.

These are wells without water, clouds carried by a tempest, for whom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever. Peter, sketching false teachers for us with these words that are right to the point, you would think we're reading out of the Old Testament, but we're not. And I think that it's a mistake to think that is not a mistake, it's downright wrong to think that the God of the Old Testament is not the God of the New Testament. He's talking about apostates who are in the churches corrupting believers, as many as they can. He's asked yourself, well, what are they doing with their lives, these apostates? Well, like I just said, they're corrupting believers. And they have become Satan's instruments, passing ruinous information about God, because they do not fear, and therefore, they are a big problem. They don't fear because they do not believe.

In Romans 3, Paul said, there is no fear of God before their eyes. And this is the case with all who would be blasphemous and change God's words, do the things that God forbids without shame, knowing that they are prohibited, but doing them nonetheless. Unfortunately, there's no shortage of well-meaning professors of Jesus Christ and churchgoers who fall prey to these. They lack discernment. Usually, along with the lack of discernment goes the lack of knowledge of God's Word. The prophet Hosea said it this way, my people perish for a lack of knowledge. Because you don't know what God says, you cannot identify what the devil is saying.

And this is a big problem to this very day. People can come into a house of God or a church, and they can sing of God's love forever as we were just singing, and hold in their heart false teachings. And the way to deal with that, of course, one way is hopefully to drown out the false teachings with true teachings. And so we look now at verse 12, and we reread, there Peter says, but these, like natural brute beasts, made to be caught and destroyed, speak evil of the things they do not understand and will utterly perish in their own corruption.

I feel somewhat like a baseball pitcher taking signals from a very good catcher, and the signal I'm getting is fastball, hard and high. And that's what the text is. The text, it gives it, I did not have to sit down and say, Lord, what do I have to speak on this Sunday? You know where you're going with this. Preach it like it is.

It's good enough the way it is. Men behaving like dangerous predatory animals, that's what he says, but these, like brute beasts, made to be caught and destroyed. Men are not supposed to be like animals, but how often, how often they fill the headlines with animalistic behavior. Brutes, that characterizes them, meaning that there's an absence of spiritual reasoning, of appreciation, intelligence, how to behave. With the case of false teachers, they have discarded it.

They've done away with it. It's not that they're just that dumb. They don't agree with what God has to say, and they're going to do it their way. Antichrist, he is the ultimate beast in the Bible, so evil that God calls him a beast. Revelation 13, 4, so they worshiped the dragon who gave authority to the beast.

Satan is the dragon here. Whether they know it or not, you take for example, I don't know how many of you are familiar with the Apple Park in California. You know Apple, the manufacturer, producer of our mobile devices and computers, et cetera. They've built this giant park. It's bigger than the footprint of it.

It's larger than the Pentagon, and it's all about human beings. The only true God is left out. He's blocked out. Every perverted thing under the sun can be accepted there, not the truth of God. Antichrist is going to love that kind of behavior, that kind of thinking, that kind of approach to life.

He's going to take advantage of it, and he's going to find a planet ready to receive him. They won't think that he is a beast. They'll think he is a savior. Such is the work of a very real devil. Christian has a right to let their guard down against Satan, Satan's workings through human beings, and he loves using the Bible to do it.

Well, we'll come to some of that hopefully in a little bit. I say hopefully because I have a bullet point there for it, but when I get there, God might say, no, don't do that. Well, going back to Revelation 13.4 where this Antichrist is called a beast, he says, so they worshiped the dragon who gave authority to the beast, and they worshiped the beast, saying, who is like the beast? Who is able to make war with him?

Now, they're not calling him the beast. God is saying that's what he is. Well, we'll tell you who's going to make war with him and defeat him when you get to, of course, Revelation 19, and the Lord comes with his saints. He says here, Peter does in verse 12, that these false teachers speak evil of things they do not understand and will utterly perish in their own corruption, irreverent creatures.

They only respect themselves and what can do well for them. You say, well, how do you know that? Well, we've seen these false teachers throughout history. I mean, one of the most horrific and recent memory is Jim Jones. Almost a thousand people died. We even have a proverb out of that, don't drink the Kool-Aid.

He's a monster, that man was, and there have been others like him. You would think that with so many explicit warnings and teachings throughout the Scripture, Old and New Testament alike, that there would be less people going to churches supporting false teachers who've taken it upon themselves to add to Scripture or take away from it, or simply suppress it in unrighteousness. How do you do that? Because you don't want to tell the truth because it might hurt someone's feelings. What about God's feelings? How does it help anyone to withhold the Word of God when your job is to release the Word of God, to spread it, to preach it? What if you had a coworker who needed the gospel but you didn't like them? Would you withhold the gospel from them?

What would happen to you if you did such a stupid thing as that? Well, what happens when we have our pulpits filled by people who don't want to tell the truth about God because it won't line their pockets, it won't populate the seats in the sanctuary? That is corruption, and it should not be tolerated by true believers. In verse 13, he goes on—I'm going to pause there—this entire second letter is about dealing with this. It's not like, oh, we've come to a passage where he's going to deal with false teachers. The entire letter is about them, and he doesn't let up.

He continues to pound them. He ends just this paragraph where they're going to be in outer darkness forever. And so this is God's Word to us, not Peter's Word. Peter is the instrument and a righteous one.

And so it is with us, too. Would you withhold this chapter from your children? Would you say, I don't want to teach my children about false teachers?

It's so negative. You'd be foolish, very foolish, and that's an understatement. In verse 13, about these false teachers who are in churches, he says, and will receive the wages of unrighteousness as those who count it pleasure to carouse in the daytime. They are spots and blemishes carousing in their own deception while they feast with you. In verse 15, he's going to mention Balaam as the poster boy for this type of behavior, and Balaam loved the wages of unrighteousness. It didn't matter how he got the money, long as he did get it. That makes the money unrighteous, especially because he sinned, went complete opposite of God. We'll get to Balaam in a moment. Always a character in the scripture. He's a perplexing character and a bit of an enigma, but so are all apostates. Balaam was hired to bring spiritual forces against God's people to their destruction, incidentally, against God's will.

If you don't know who Balaam is in the Bible, the book of Numbers, the fourth book in the Bible, in chapter 22, you can begin the story of Balaam. Well, the wages of sin, we know, we're told in the letter to the Romans, is death. That's payday for those who aren't right with their maker. Not those who sin, but those whose sins remain upon them, having no savior to remove them. Revelation, chapter 20, the devil who deceived them, that's the world, like those of Apple Park, who flaunt their defective rainbow colors, they're missing one. They're missing a point. They're missing a lot of things. Hopefully, we get a chance to point it out, but the devil who deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone where the beast and the false prophet are, and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever.

See the emphasis there. Then I saw a great white throne and him who sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away. And there was found no place for them, and I saw the dead, small and great, standing before God, and the books were opened. And another book was opened, which is the book of life, and the dead were judged according to their works by the things which were written in the books. The sea gave up the dead who were in it, and death and Hades were delivered up, the dead who were in them. And they were judged each according to his works. Then death and Hades were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death, and anyone not found in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire. If there are little bits of that that you don't understand, that's not the key.

The key is what you do understand. And what we do understand from reading that revealed word is that God will judge the unrighteous, and he's not fooling around. And because God delays his judgment does not mean it's not coming. And so many human beings live as though because they've gotten away with something so long they're going to continue to get away with it. Or it won't be so bad.

They are wrong. Looking at my own life before coming to Christ, it was not in any of my thoughts. Life was all about me living for my pleasures, that which satisfied me. The day came when I met Jesus Christ and everything stopped.

Everything changed. I was handed a filter to filter out all the things that are false and wrong. Given a roadmap and sent to work, and so have you who have come to Christ. And if you're here this morning and you've not come to Jesus, you're going to either listen to the world, the devil, or your own self, or you're going to hear the voice of God and respond to it as others have. And you, by some, will be hated for it, but it's worth it.

It's worth being hated for Jesus Christ, so long as you're upholding righteousness. He continues, Peter does, as those who count it pleasure to carouse in the daytime. And again, we're in verse 13. He's speaking about these false teachers who flaunt their sin without hesitation. They do it in broad daylight because they have no shame.

Shamelessly immodest. Well, how many now do we see who are sexually perverted in pulpits, broadcasting it, upholding it, promoting it, jamming it down the throats of people, and whole congregations gobbling it up? Zephaniah the prophet said, the unjust know no shame. Zephaniah 3, verse 5, there are spots and blemishes. These are undesirable marks on a body, even the body of Christ.

Remember, these are part of the love feast of the church. They've embedded themselves. They are here amongst us. I don't know that they're here amongst us in this congregation, but they are here amongst us in Christianity. And here he says, there are spots and blemishes.

Those are, again, unwanted emblems. I think Peter is linking this, not only, there's a spiritual element with this in the offerings. When you brought a lamb to be offered, it was not to have a spot, a natural defect, or an acquired defect, either or, a spot or a blemish, when you offered it to the Lord. In other words, you couldn't bring your hand-me-down to the Lord and say, well, I've got to make room in my garage, how about give this church, it's useless to me and anybody else, but I've donated it nonetheless. God said, I'm not into that. But I think it's a little bit more here also with what Peter is saying, and even if he is not meaning it, the Holy Spirit points it out because of the leper. The leper had a spot that was to be investigated, and once it was confirmed this was indeed leprosy, there was an entire process for that leper to go through to be quarantined, separated from the body, and hopefully restored at some point. And so when Peter says, these are spots and blemishes, this is not good, these people. You don't want this on the body.

You want no parts of this spiritually, physically, or in any other way. Jude, who echoes so much of what Peter is saying, when he gets to, he's going to say the same thing, but the word he chooses for spots, he says spots and blemishes, the word he chooses for spots is phonetically similar to Peter's word for spots, but it has a different meaning. They sound like the same word, so he's making a play on the words.

He gets his letter and he writes, he gets to what Peter said, and he sort of soups it up. He makes it go a little faster, and the word he uses means the rocks, and it's used in shipping. You know, you don't want to hit the rocks with the ship.

That's not a good combination. And he is saying, Jude is, they will cause you shipwreck. Peter is saying they'll cause you leprosy and separation spiritually. Jude says, yes, right, shipwreck, for those of you who may not get it. And it's just a genius of the scripture. It just continues to roll on with such nuances as that, carousing in their own deceptions while they feast with you, reveling, having a good old time while they're doing evil, laughing it up, yuck, yuck, yuck, yuck, while they're populating hell as fast as they can with their new recruits.

We'll come to more of that as we move through the rest of the letters till we get through Jude. Paul says this, having the same concerns. He says, and do not become idolaters as were some of them, speaking, of course, of those coming out of Egypt with Moses. He says, as it is written, the people sat down to eat, drink, rose up to play, party, have a good time in the name of religion. Just don't be obedient to it. Oh, you can be obedient to parts of it because we need that, but not all of it. And that is what gives the heretics the power that they have. They have been allowed to embed themselves like poison ivy in a flowerbed amongst the righteous. I'm hesitant to name names anymore. In earlier years, I enjoyed it because it needed to happen. But now I feel that when I name names, it becomes more of a distraction. Those who need to hear it say, oh, but I like that one.

And then they turn on me and not listen to what is being said and what is actually happening. So I don't know, do I name names? Now the righteous will say, yeah, name them. Go ahead, line them up.

But the weak, they're not ready for it. But there are heretics that sell books and make a lot of money of it and a lot of maybe some of you sitting here have them on your bookshelves or maybe at one point you did. They make a lot of money off of selling books about the Bible which are not true just because they garnish it with a verse here and there. All someone has to tell you is, it's God's way.

Okay, we don't have to investigate any further than that. You said it, it's God's way. Years back there was a book, you know, Eating God's Way or something like that. What is that?

I could tell you he has good manners, I know that much. The communion table is eating God's way. But I mean, how do you just make that all of a sudden, Christians, you need to eat this way?

Again, people would buy it. What about the one back to Eden? I can't even find Eden.

I mean, we're not the same, the same people don't exist. Adam and Eve in Eden did not have the digestive system we have. Not entirely, it was corrupted by sin.

God was so serious about keeping them out of Eden, he set a cherubim there with a sword going in every which way to keep them out. I know there are those that think that the Jewish diet is the way we're supposed to eat because it's in the Old Testament, I disagree with that. I don't think the Bible teaches that at all.

I think the fact the New Testament comes along and just dismantles that. The reason why the Jews were forbidden from eating so many of the foods they would have liked to eat was because they were to be separate, different. Because other peoples were eating this food and living just as healthy as they were, dying at the same age. I mean, just even to this day, you can find people that eat the most atrocious things and they live into their hundreds.

So, we must be careful. Don't be gullible because people will squeeze from you as much as they can to line their pockets and really have nothing to do with God's truth and God's word. We don't need a book on dieting, we need a book on obedience and we have one. It's called the Bible.

And I'm all for a book that preaches the word, that comments on the scripture, that is in line with what the Bible has to say. But many, many churchgoers cannot be content with the simplicity and beauty of our faith and they lust for spiritual thrills. It's just not enough that a man would stand up here and say, thus says the Lord.

No, they want more. And they become tired of hearing truth. You know, just trying to be a church is very difficult because you have so many Christians coming from other places that don't want to just be a church and trying to bring it here and make us like them so that they can leave us like they left the other one.

It's a cycle that is not very nice. Acts 2 42, they continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship and the breaking of bread and prayers. There's a template for the church. Acts 2 46, so continuing daily with one accord in the temple and breaking bread from house to house, they ate their food with gladness and simplicity of heart.

Simplicity of heart with gladness, that to me is attractive. But dissatisfied churchgoers with the system of the New Testament, they will be picked off if not careful. Listen, Revelation 2 14, but I have a few things against you, Jesus wrote to the church, to the apostle John, because you have there those who hold the teaching of Balaam, who taught Balak to put a stumbling block before the children of Israel to eat things sacrificed to idols and to commit sexual immorality. You have harbored in your church bad things and you're quite proud of it.

You're doing it in my name. That's all we have time for on today's edition of Cross Reference Radio. You've been listening to Pastor Rick Gaston of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville in Virginia as he teaches through the book of 2 Peter. If you'd like to listen to more messages from this series or if you'd like more information about this program, please visit our website, crossreferenceradio.com. We also encourage you to subscribe to our podcast so you'll never have to miss a program. Just search for Cross Reference Radio in iTunes, Google Play Music, or your favorite podcast app. What a great way to keep God's Word with you wherever you go. We hope you'll tune in again next time as Pastor Rick continues studying through the scriptures, right here on Cross Reference Radio.