Untrustworthy Preachers (Part A)

These heretics that come into the church, they use the Lord's name. They often use the Bible, His words.

Such words as truth and love and faith and kindness. But their meanings are entirely different. Their applications, their connections. They're not connected to the throne of God. They're connected to the kingdom of hell.

And it is most often simply, they're just ambitious men. Not too interested in what God has to say, but what God can get for them. No wonder Peter starts off slamming these false teachers. We begin a new chapter in 2 Peter chapter 2 and a new message. Untrustworthy preachers.

Here's Pastor Rick. We are in 2 Peter chapter 2 and if you like watered down preaching and heresy, you've picked the wrong time to come to church. We will take verses 1 through 3 and that will be quite a bit for this morning. So if you have your Bibles open to 2 Peter chapter 2. But there were also false prophets among the people, even as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Lord who bought them and bring on themselves swift destruction. And many will follow their destructive ways because of whom the way of truth will be blasphemed by covetedness.

They will exploit you with deceptive words. For a long time their judgment has not been idle and their destruction does not slumber. Untrustworthy preachers. Last session in 2 Peter we discussed the trustworthy scriptures that we have and Peter of course moves right to the antithesis, the other side, which are these untrustworthy prophets.

He had said to his listeners that he did not follow cunningly devised fables when he made known to them the power in the coming of Christ but was an eyewitness and he briefly takes them back to that moment on the mount of transfiguration. He's very, very clear about this. Maybe you are or you know an atheist who says, I don't believe God exists, to which we respond, well I do. And maybe you know an agnostic who says, well I can't tell if God exists or not.

Well our response is, well I can. And this authority is born of faith in truth, in fact, and it is a powerful thing that has allowed the church to survive more on slots than any religion ever known to man. And so we've been sufficiently warned in scripture, new and Old Testament alike, that there are going to be these false teachers, these troublemakers within the body of Christ and yet with these warnings false prophets have infested our churches today. They're all over the place.

Forget about the internet. They breed them there or something. And Jesus, I'll take just about 20 or 30 verses for a moment, just a few verses. Our Lord Jesus Christ, he said, beware of false prophets who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. They will gobble you up.

They will chew you alive. Matthew 24, 11. Jesus, the Lord says again, then many false prophets will rise up and deceive many.

That's the end times. Many false prophets. Preparing the apostate church for anti-Christ.

In the time we're living in now, we are in the preparatory stages for anti-Christ to launch his despicable offensive against righteousness. Again, Matthew 24, Jesus speaking, for false Christs and false prophets will rise up, will rise and show great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect. In Luke's Gospel, again the Lord said, woe to you when all men speak well of you, for so did their fathers to the false prophets. Acts chapter 13, and now when they had gone through the isle of Paphos, they found a certain sorcerer, a false prophet, a Jew named Bar-Jesus. And then John in his first letter writes, Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits whether they are of God, because many false prophets have gone into the world. This is not even a percentage of what the Bible has to say about false teachers, false prophets, fakos, claiming to represent the voice of God. Remember, the word prophecy in Scripture is not limited to prediction.

It is quite a bit more. It includes prediction, predictive prophecy, but there's direct prophecy, there's encouragement, there are forms of it. Anytime someone is preaching the word of God, it is a form of prophecy in that sense. False teachers, they made their way to the churches in Galatia, in Colossae, in Pergamos, in Thyatira, and likely Laodicea also. This in the age of the apostles, why they were still alive. Ephesians chapter 4, Paul said that God had given to the church the apostles, the prophets, those who evangelize, the pastor-teachers.

And he said, for the equipping of the saints, for the work of ministry, for the edification of the body of Christ, Satan comes along, counterfeiter that he is, and he gives to the apostate church for the stripping of the saints, the obstruction of ministry and the ruin of the body of Christ. He flips everything around to the wicked and the evil and the negative. We're not ignorant of his devices. We are fully aware of what he does. And yet, he gets away with it.

And so we'll hopefully discuss some of why he is so successful. But in the end, it comes down to the individual. If you do not love the truth of Jesus Christ, you are lined up for destruction. These heretics that come into the church, they use the Lord's name, they often use the Bible, his words.

Such words as truth and love and faith and kindness, but their meanings are entirely different. Their applications, their connections, they're not connected to the throne of God. They're connected to the kingdom of hell. And it is most often simply that they're just ambitious men, not too interested in what God has to say, but what God can get for them. No wonder Peter starts off slamming these false teachers and he doesn't let up through the rest of his letter. So now we look at verse 1, but there were also false prophets among the people, even as there will be false teachers among you who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Lord who bought them and bring on themselves swift destruction.

Again, he's linking what he said. There were no chapter divisions when he wrote the letter. He just freely wrote the letters and he's just moving from his point of God's word is trustworthy, holy men moved by the Holy Spirit, and now he comes to wicked men moved by satanic spirits. And when we say Satan, we mean the whole realm of the underworld against mankind, contrary to God.

We don't just think of Satan as Lucifer, the leader of the pack. Well, having pointed it out, Peter is going to warn the church of the devil's corrupting ways. He's going to use scripture to do it. In verses 2 and 3, he tells us about the doctrine of false teachers, heretics. In verses 3, also the latter part through verse 9, he speaks of the doom of the heretics. And then verse 10 through verse 22 of 2 Peter chapter 2, he talks about the deeds of the heretics. So we have the doctrine, the doom, and the deeds.

The church is no excuse, totally prepared for these chumps. And yet, the behavior is over not, not all of us, those who don't love the truth, but insist on staying somewhere close to Christianity in name only. And I don't think Peter doesn't give them much, doesn't give them any tolerance, neither does Paul. And everything that Peter is saying, Paul is hit on, John is hit on, the old prophets have hit on these things. And that is a lesson that God is saying, man is prone to idolatry, to error, and aware of this, God has given us the ammunition, the body armor, for the body of Christ, for the individual Christian, to withstand these things. And he says here, after he, so that was that connection, he says, but, in contrast to the righteous men, but there will also be false prophets, and there were also false prophets among the people. Now the people, of course, he's referencing here, are the Jewish people.

He's saying that those righteous Jews had to deal with this junk also. Interesting, the word false prophet is pseudo-prophets. The word for false pseudo, we get our English word for pseudo, a fake, a fraud, faux prophets, if you'd like, and this warning to the church of their arrival. That's what Peter is doing. Jude will announce, they're here. Peter is saying they're going to come in bigger numbers. They knew they were there already, but they're going to increase.

And Jude will write and say, well, it's happened. And that unison between the two men because of the Holy Spirit. But in the Bible, false prophets fell into basically three categories. Those who worshiped false gods and served idols. And they had their false prophets. True Christianity says that all the other religions and their prophets are false. Muhammad to Christianity is a false prophet. False Christianity says that's not so. That's false Christianity. Doesn't believe the criteria set for us through scripture. The second category of false prophet are those who falsely claim to receive the message of the Lord when they really are rejecting it. This one is just so successful because they say, oh yeah, we believe in the Bible and then they proceed to speak and they don't believe it. But the audience oftentimes has been deceived. Oh, he believes the Bible, okay.

But they're not listening. Just yesterday I saw this thing on YouTube. It said, the untold story of David and Goliath. Here we go.

There's no untold story. So yeah, I took the bait, but I had my 1911 out. I was ready.

And so, here's this. He was dressed as though all the clothes Goodwill refused, he put on. And it's okay, so he's supposed to be Einstein. He doesn't care how he looks, you're just supposed to accept him based on the mirror. I'm going personal, I know. Not your conviction, but it's mine. Nobody should be dressed like a bum all the time. Accept the bum.

All right, I'm back. And so he's talking about David and Goliath, and right away it's just a storyteller kind of approach. And after he tells a story, not very well, he begins to pick it apart. As though, well, Goliath really was a sickly man, and David really was, you know, strong, and it just makes the story sound like there was no spiritual activity in this at all. That God did not empower his servant with a righteous indignation to stand and say, who is this uncircumcised Philistine that so defiles the name of the Lord, that blasphemes the name of God? And David, you couldn't hold him back, because it was unleashed righteousness against the iniquity that stood before him. And this speaker with this watered-down talk and all the mushmines just listening to him, so thrilled by what he was saying and how he was saying it, they're wrong, all of them. Giving no honor to the King of Kings, to Jesus' cry. Okay, I don't know if this person was claiming to be a Christian or not. I didn't mean to bring this up, but I couldn't hold it back. To know that they're out there and people are listening to them chip away, nibble away at the power of God's word and the doings of God in Scripture, trying to communicate to us very intelligently, that the Bible is really not all that.

This is just another story, that if we put it under the microscope of medical science and social studies, that we'll get to the bottom of these things and we'll find out the Word of God is not living in power for sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of the soul, the spirit, the joints, and the marrow. I'm not too bothered that they believe that. It just irks me that people are satisfied with this.

It had 35,000 likes, 10,001 dislikes. How many of you are afraid to say, I don't like that, because you might get some hate response and junk like that? Anyway, let's go back to this. Now, I hope I don't sound carnal, but I do hope I do sound totally intolerant of anyone who tries to use the Bible to reduce the Bible. And this is what we're up against.

It's always been, but now we've got this broadcast feature of the Internet that is atomic in its reach, and we better have a response ready. Now, granted, there are times you can be speaking to someone who you know is full out wrong and God tells you, he just doesn't give you the open door and you can say nothing. Well, back to this, those who falsely claim to receive the message from the Lord, and the third category are those who have wandered from the truth and ceased to be true prophets, but they still continue to flap their gums. They continue to preach heresy instead of just, you know, fine, go get another profession.

No, they want to still deal with spiritual things, saying, I tried Christianity, it didn't work for me. I found out it was not all of what it claimed to be. Well, what does it claim to be? The truth and the way. And it promises that there's going to be tribulation in the midst of it, and that we are to endure.

Endurance means you take the hits. There's nothing else you can do. You just have to take it. And as a Christian, you find out you can ask God to remove a certain this or that from your life, and he does not. Then you have to take it in Christ, trusting him as a faithful and loving father. So the antidote for deceit is love of the truth. Not the truth, the love of the truth.

What's the difference? Well, if you just have the truth, but you don't love it, that's the recipe for apostasy. Apostates had the truth. They just didn't love it.

You have to love it. That's what we're taught in the scripture. 2 Thessalonians, chapter 2, Paul comes right out and tells us that there are those that did not have the love of the truth, and they suffered for it.

The coming of the lawless one is according to the working of Satan with all power. Signs and lying wonders bookmark that. With all unrighteous deception among those who perish because they did not receive the love of the truth that they might be saved.

There's nothing about that that is difficult to understand. But instead of love for truth, some love sensations and feelings and thrills over facts, over obedience. In other words, the feeling shuts off the truth. That's why they like signs and wonders.

They want to be wowed. Oh, I like that. Tell me more. But it's a lie.

That's okay. It feels good. No wonder Satan uses lying wonders, and no wonder we find him using lying wonders through Antichrist to deceive the planet. If possible, said the Lord, even the elect. Many professing believers lap up baseless and thrilling words. God's men have always locked horns with Satan's counterfeits who infiltrate groups of believers. In this day and age, you know, for an hour or so, we come in and we kind of just leave everything else.

We'll reduce the distractions as much as humanly possible. And there are so many that I'm not coming back to that church. And then they'll go sit under watered down teaching. They're setting themselves up. They have said, my priority is not God's word.

My priority is my comfort. And being catered to. I don't know that they always mean it this way. I've thought it out yet that far.

But this is what's going on. And God's men have come along and have always told the believers to stand upright, discipline yourselves against these things. We all struggle with this or that. None of us are super Christians. None of us.

Not one. But we are all called to try to be. And Jesus said, be perfect like your father in heaven.

How high of a bar is that? The throne of God. Isaiah dealt with them. Here's Isaiah chapter 30, speaking about the ministry he was involved with. He said that God's speaking through him, of course, that this is a rebellious people, lying children. Children who will not hear the law of Yahweh, who say to the seers, do not see. That is the prophets. And to the prophets, do not prophesy to us right things. Speak to us smooth things. Prophesy deceits. Get out of the way.

Turn aside from the path. Cause the Holy One of Israel to cease from before us. You see, this is lampooning. This is satire. He is saying, oh no, you won't come out and say this. This is what you're doing and you know it and God is on to you and you better eject.

You better pull out of this crashing plane. Jeremiah had to deal with them quite often, of course. Jeremiah 5, the prophets prophesy falsely and the priests rule by their own authority. They're not subject to God. They've taken their own themselves. They become the culture. He continues, and my people love to have it so.

What is up with that? Why does God's people like to have this? And then he says, but what will you do in the end? How are you going to stand before God when judgment comes? Six identifying biblical marks of false prophets. There are others.

Not an exhaustive list. Through signs and wonders they lead astray after false gods. Deuteronomy chapter 13. Every Christian should read Deuteronomy 13. Number two, their prophecies don't come to pass. Deuteronomy 18 verses 20 and 22. They contradict God's word. Isaiah 8 verse 20.

They bear bad fruit. That would mean it's immoral. It's unbiblical.

It's not true. Matthew 7 verses 18 through 20. All men speak well of them.

All men in the culture, of course. This is what ecumenicism is. Can't we all just get along and hold hands and pray? It doesn't matter what God you pray to and I pray to. We'll just all pray together.

Oh yeah, we like that. Applause from hell. Number six, they deny that Jesus, the one and only Christ, has come once for all in the flesh. First John chapter 4 verse 3. Well, Jesus is not, you know, he didn't really and they begin to attack him. Those are just six. It only takes one to be a false prophet.

If you get two out of three, no, it's just one. Peter continues, he says, even as there will be false teachers among you. So he's saying there's nothing new about this. This is the one topic that we can approach with little restraint. It's because it's such an obvious thing.

The fires can, you can just stoke the flames in the boiler, get it hot. Because this is about damning souls. False teachers are not just those who win, you know, people to their side.

Unless you say it this way, what side is that? Eternal condemnation, hell, separation from God. Those are the stakes. We're not talking about winning a debate, we're talking about where you're going to go if you believe these people. And why do you believe them? Satan sows his weed seeds amongst the wheat. We know this, as Jesus warned in Matthew 13. False prophets, they are those that know the truth but don't like it.

So they've mingled with it those things that refuse the truth, that make it no longer true, and they abandon the truth. And when I say they know it, I'm not saying they've submitted to it or they agree with it. I'm saying they are aware of it. They are aware of what God says. Saul, King Saul of Israel, he was aware of the fact that he was not supposed to go and seek counsel from a witch.

And he did it anyway. Speaking about God on their own authority, that is a false prophet. Isaiah chapter 9, For the leaders of this people cause them to err, and those who are led by them are destroyed.

Not in this lifetime necessarily, you can go through this lifetime quite comfortably. First class to hell. It is something that happens. He continues, Peter does, in verse 1, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies. Secretly, they fly beneath the radar because they know they're up to no good. They know this is deception. They know it's dishonest. And so they have to veil their dishonesty.

Substituting their opinions over revealed truth from God. Jude says it like this, For certain men have crept in unnoticed. In other words, these apostles and prophets, they were on to this.

They just didn't sneak past them. 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.