Father, we admit that we are ignorant and need to be taught. We are not able to know you on our own or to raise ourselves up to understand you are, yet you have revealed yourself to us. Lord, we ask that through your word this morning, you would keep us from false teaching, that you would lead us into truth. Lord, we trust that your spirit has this in mind for us and that by looking to Christ, we can know who you are. We thank you for revealing yourself in your Son, and now in your Word. We praise you for this, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen. It was not very long after the New Testament closed that various false teachings started to arise throughout the Church. The first group of false teachings that really starts to grow in church history deals mostly with the nature of God and the nature of Christ. First, early on in the church, attacking the idea that Jesus himself was fully divine or maybe that he was not himself even fully human. And that eventually develops into the debates, into the formulation of what comes later on in a few centuries, the development of the doctrine of the Trinity. That God is one God, and yet united as three distinct persons. And then continuing again, we have another debate and another false teachings that come up about the person of Christ and who he is as man and as God. And again, the church defines and understands what scripture says, that Christ is one person, yet with two inseparable natures. But of course, this is not the end of false teaching. It continues as we look throughout history. Later on, we have the teachings of a man named Pelagius, bringing up this idea that believers are somehow able to save themselves, and that Jesus only made it possible for us to earn our own salvation. And this history of false teaching continues throughout. Now, these and other false teachings are still with us, and we see them in the cults and of the false churches of our day. We shouldn't be surprised when we see this happening throughout history or again, even in our own day and age. Because false teaching didn't just start after the New Testament. There were false teachers already beginning to spread their lies during the writing of the New Testament. That's exactly what we see here. in the second letter of Peter. And again, that shouldn't even be a surprise for us, because as we look throughout the entire Old Testament, we see again and again, as we even read in Ezekiel, that there were false prophets throughout the history of Israel, coming up with their own ideas and false visions and false dreams to Israel, trying to bring their own thoughts to them. And of course, again, that should not even surprise us, because as we go all the way back, the first false teacher that we see is the serpent in the garden, leading Adam and Eve astray. From the beginning, from the beginning of when God revealed Himself and called His people to trust in Him, there have always been those trying to lead His people astray. We see this pattern throughout the ages. God reveals Himself in His Word. He gives His Spirit and He gives ministers and prophets and teachers to teach His people His Word. He calls them to reject false teachers who stand against His Word. And we see that over and over. And Peter is just continuing that pattern here for his recipients during the New Testament era and now teaching the same thing to us. Peter is calling his recipients and he's calling us to prepare for false teachers by studying God's Word. By knowing what it is that it says. Christians should prepare for false teachers by studying God's Word. Now we looked at the end of chapter one in second Peter all the way back in October. So just a quick reminder, we saw that that second half of chapter one was really all about building up our confidence in God's word, reminding us that we can trust on the solid foundation of what God has revealed in the scriptures. Peter told us that the scriptures are our only sure guide until Christ returns. And he gave us a very clear reason for this. Look again at chapter one, verse 21. For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. The scriptures can be our guide until Christ returns because they are of divine origin. And now as we move into chapter two, Peter will give us instruction on how they guide us, what they guide us to do. They show us true teaching so that we are able to distinguish from false teaching. They show us who the true teachers are so that we can then distinguish them from the false teachers. Looking then now into chapter two at verse one, we see this legacy of the false teachers, this history that has gone back throughout the ages. And Peter connects the false teachers that his recipients are hearing from with those that go all the way back. But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you. This false teaching is not new. It shouldn't shock them, and it shouldn't shock us. And this connection that he makes between the false teachers during his day, and I think we could connect that even to our day, to those that go back throughout the history of God's people, gives us three common aspects of false teaching that he lays out in the next couple of verses. Three common aspects of false teaching. False teachers come in secret, they bring heresy, and they deny their master. Look there. Just as there were false teachers among you who will secretly bring in destructive heresies. This is the nature of false teaching. It is done in secret. No one shows up in our church and says, hey everybody, I'm a false teacher, listen to me. It doesn't usually go over very well if that's how you start your false ministry. But people sneak in with partial truths. They say things, well, you know, I'm just asking questions. I'm just trying to figure this out on my own. That reminds us of that original false teacher, doesn't it? When the devil said, does God really say? Now, genuine questions, of course, are good. Inquiry, when you don't understand what it is the Bible teaches or what the church has taught throughout its history, those are, of course, good questions that we all should be constantly asking each other. But questioning the Bible itself, questioning what God has clearly revealed, or distorting the Bible's teachings, that is when we have fallen now, not into inquiry, but into false teaching. And notice they don't just do it secretly, what they bring in, Peter describes as destructive heresy. Now, the way we use that term heresy in our modern theological discourse usually means to deny one of the fundamentals of the faith, to reject the Trinity, to say that, no, salvation is not through Christ alone, or to say, no, we really can't trust the Bible. We usually reserve the term heresy to describe those who have struck at one of our creedal documents to reject something that we would find in the apostles or in the Nicene Creed. And this is very dangerous to deny these things, not only is a matter of academic or theological precision, but really begins to endanger our soul. Now, the New Testament uses this term a little bit differently. It's very closely connected, but the term here for heresy in the New Testament literally means a sect or a faction or a breaking off unit. But you can see the connection there, can't you? To teach differently than the apostles, to go against what the church has always taught as the foundation truths of the scriptures, that begins a new sect. That begins something that is not true Christianity, that traces its teaching back to the apostles and to our Lord. So denying the fundamentals of the faith always leads to schism. And schism is itself one of the worst of all the heresies. To say that the church is not one church united under the teachings of the apostles and the prophets in the scriptures and under our one Lord. And this is exactly what happens when we have people who reject the foundations of the faith. It leads to cults. It leads to false religions, either because they are excommunicated properly from our churches when they refuse to repent, or because they leave on their own. We see this today in groups like the Mormons, the Jehovah's Witness, and even the Unitarians. It is important that we recognize that there is one foundational teachings that come from the Scriptures. And even though we might have disagreements and debates with our other brothers and sisters in other churches and other denominations, we are united on the foundations of what the Church has always believed and what the Apostles have made clear in the Scriptures. But this schism is not the last of the effects of their secret false teaching. Lastly here, Peter says that they deny their master. Denying the fundamentals of the faith and bringing schism into the church and division into the church leads to denying the master who bought them, Peter says, and it leads to their swift destruction. False teaching has serious consequences. It endangers the souls of people who say it and of those who hear it and listen to it and believe it. This is why it is so important that we deal with false teaching swiftly and we deal with it decisively. There can be nothing more practical, there can be no more important pastoral task than to root out false teachers. And if we remember, that's what that word pastor means, to be a shepherd, to be one who defends the sheep from the wolves. There is no more pastoral task than to defend the flock from false teaching, because that false teaching endangers the souls of those who teach it and who hear it. But we have that interesting phrase there, don't we? Denying the master who bought them. If Jesus paid for their sin, how can they then deny it or reject it? Now, if you've known a little bit about Reformed theology or you've heard, maybe heard this passage before in debates, you'll say, well, does this have anything to do with what is sometimes called limited atonement? I prefer the term particular redemption. And what that literally means is that Christ's death actually paid the penalty for believers. It doesn't just make salvation possible. If you are a believer in Jesus, your debt was actually paid for. He particularly died for you. Or maybe another one of these reformed doctrines, perseverance, or even maybe sometimes better called the preservation of the saints. Well, they were bought by Christ, but yet somehow they fall away. How could they be true believers and not continue in their trust of Jesus? Does this passage here show some cracks in our understanding of the reformed doctrine of salvation? Well, I don't think so. I think what we need to recognize here is that throughout the Bible, salvation is talked about in multiple different ways, often in a corporate way. We, in our own kind of modern theological discussions, often talk about salvation much more in an individualistic way. And that's important. We need to know how what Christ has done affects us individually, how he has come and died and saved us personally from our sin. But more often than not, when the New Testament describes what Christ has done, it talks about it in corporate terms, in terms of His people as a whole. And I believe that's what Peter is talking about here. That these false teachers were part of the church, at least until they left, at least until they were excommunicated. These false teachers were members of the church. And we have no problem saying, and we affirm with the New Testament, that Jesus died for his people. Jesus died for the church. And that Jesus preserves and holds on to his people and brings the church to the end day. Now, in the church are all those who confess Christ. Everyone who is part of his people we would call the church. But we also know from elsewhere throughout Scripture that not all who are in the church truly believe. Not all who are in the church are of the church. So we are able to say and affirm with Scripture that Christ paid the penalty for the members of Living Water OPC. But it's possible that there are members who won't persevere. It's possible that there are members who have not had their sins atoned for. But we still say that Christ has died for his people. Now passages like this, for those who truly do trust in Christ, should not bring any sort of fear, but should remind us that it is Christ himself who has actually died for us. But for those of us who are wandering from the faith, for those of us who are not living up to our confession, this should be a warning that though we say that Christ has died for all his people, we need to be aware and we need to be warning ourselves to make sure that we truly do trust in him and that we are part of his people. And this fact that there are those who are in the church who wander and who leave Christ is a sad truth. And many follow these false teachers and that itself is also a sad truth because this denial of the faith comes, as we see here in verses 2 and 3, from their corrupted character. Look at verses 2 and the first half of 3 with me. And many will follow their sensuality, and because of them the way of truth will be blasphemed. And in their greed they will exploit you with false words. So here again, we see two character traits of false teachers that, excuse me, lead to two outcomes of following false teachers. First of all, they're called sensual. They follow their own desires. Now, this of course could refer to sexual immorality here, but really the term deals with any sort of personal physical desire. This could be money or fame or the desire to have power. And what that sensuality that false teachers are often characterized with leads to, it says, is the way of truth being blasphemed. The truth of the scriptures, the truth that Christ has come to die for his people in the church and to save them from their sin has been dishonored. And Christ's reputation has been tarnished. And the church has been tarnished. False teaching hurts the church's testimony to Christ and to the gospel. Yet another reason why it is so important to reject and to refute false teachers so quickly and so pointedly. So sensuality leads to the way of truth being blasphemed. And then he goes and he gives a little bit more of a specific character trait of that sensuality, greed. Greed is especially that sensual desire specified, the desire for money. And this leads to exploit many with false words. I think there's probably been a few times throughout church history that this has been more true than today. Where we here in America are and even are exporting this throughout the whole world through some of our churches. This heresy, this false teaching, this divisive teaching of the prosperity gospel. That Jesus has come to give us the best life now. That if we truly trusted in Jesus, our bank accounts would be full and our bodies would be healthy and our lives would be perfect. This is simply contrary to everything that is revealed to us in scripture. That ultimately we know that our best life is not now, but is to come when Christ returns and our righteousness and our holiness is finally revealed in the new heavens and the new earth. And the way in which the gospel goes forward, the way in which the church is built, and the way in which the kingdom expands is not through you and I and other believers enlarging our bank accounts or our homes or our cars or even having healthy and great lives. But it's most importantly done the way that Jesus achieved our salvation. Through us joining and suffering with Him. Through us suffering as our Savior did and joining in that task to bring the gospel to the whole world. So when we hear things today about how greed, or I'm sorry, how money is to be a sign of the victorious Christian life. We should remember what Peter tells us here, that that message of greed to exploit others for your own personal gain is nothing but false teaching and a divisive heresy. Well, he continues then to connect the false teachers during his day, and I would say during ours as well, with the false teachers from the past, now connecting their destiny. Look at the second half of verse 3. Their condemnation from long ago is not idle, and their destruction is not asleep. God will not let false teachers, God will not let those who lead his people astray off the hook. Judgment will come for them. It is not idle, it is not asleep. False teachers or false prophets in the Old Testament were judged as we read in Ezekiel. Peter promises here that false teachers in the New Testament will be judged. False teachers throughout church history we can see have been judged and even today we know that God will bring judgment upon those who reject his word and lead his people astray. Peter then prepares his recipients to deal with this false teaching by giving them a list of biblical examples, going through the history of the Old Testament, giving them a number of different places where false teachers also rose up amongst God's people and were judged. We won't go through all the details of all of them, but just look down there and see. He describes the falling of angels and how they were judged. How the sinners during Noah's day were leading people astray and how they were judged in the flood and then ultimately how the people in Sodom and Gomorrah themselves were judged for their own sin and for their leading of people astray. Now, this preparation to deal with false teachers should cause us to look at false teachers from the past. Biblical stories of judgment are tools for us to fight against false teaching. You see, Peter's standard here for what false teaching is and what will happen to false teachers is the scriptures themselves. But it's also his weapon. The scriptures are what he uses to prepare, to build up, and to give his people the ability to fight against when they hear false teaching in their own day. We fight false teaching with right teaching. But it's not all negative, it's not just judgment here, but there's also a positive promise, a promise of salvation for believers as well. Look at verses 9 and 10. Then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgment, and especially those who indulge in the lust of defiling passions and despise authority. Trust God to lead you to the truth and to lead you away from false teachings. He has promised and he has given us all that we need to lead us from what we shouldn't be led into astray and into what he has truly revealed about himself. He has given us the scriptures. He has given us his spirit. He has given us the church and his ministers. God will preserve his people through his means. Now, the core of what Peter is doing here, if he is preparing his people to reject false teachers and false teaching by having them look back at the history of Israel and look back about how God has done this in the Old Testament, in Bible stories, well, that makes the application really easy for us, doesn't it? How do we apply this passage? We do exactly what Peter does to his recipients. We study the Bible. You are holding in your hand right here, God's greatest preservation tool in your hands. He has revealed his truth in these words to you. Now I would say, especially as we see here in Peter's example, especially in the Old Testament narratives. Now I know sometimes they seem really long, and maybe sometimes they seem a little boring. They're not boring, we just need to be better readers. But as we read the Old Testament, especially the Old Testament narratives, we will see patterns and symbols and types and shadows of the true teaching that will lead us to godliness. The more we enrich ourselves in scripture, the more Christ becomes real to us on every page. Now I say this again and again so many times, it's okay if you don't get everything. If you read your Bible every day and so much of it goes over your head and you're just not sure what's there, that's okay. Keep reading. Marinate yourself in God's Word. Every day you are approaching a greater understanding of who He is, and the Lord is using His Word as a tool to protect you and to defend you from what is false teaching. So when you hear it, you will realize, well, maybe I didn't understand exactly what all that stuff in 2 Kings was about, but what you're teaching me sounds the exact opposite of what God said there. If you want some more specifics on how to do this, I would encourage you to stay for Sunday school today. We're having our annual kind of refresh, talking about how to bring in good ideas into our own personal worship, our own family worship in Sunday school today. So we're gonna talk about new Bible reading plans and new study habits for the year. So if you're looking for some more specifics, I would just encourage you to stay for Sunday school if you're able. But I would go a step further beyond just studying our Bible. We can also study church history. God's pattern of judging false teachers and saving his people didn't end when the New Testament closed. The same God, the same judgment, and the same salvation has continued for the past 2,000 years. If you want to be protected against the lies of Mormonism and Unitarianism and Jehovah's Witness, you can study the 3rd and the 4th and the 5th centuries and the great debates and the great work of the theologians during those times on the Trinity and Christology. If you want to protect yourselves against legalism and thinking that you are able in some way to contribute to your own salvation, you can study Augustine and the Pelagian controversy. If you want to protect yourself against church corruption and against idolatrous worship, you can study the great heroes of the Reformation. If you want to protect yourself against liberalism and denying the truth and not having the Bible as our foundation, you can study the late 19th century and the early 20th century. And I would say our fathers in the OPC are great examples for standing for the truth of the Bible. Those same issues Church, the church and ministers have worked through throughout the centuries, take advantage of their work. The Bible is our only final and sole foundation, but let us take advantage of what men and the church have done throughout the ages to learn and to be protected from these false teachings that continue to crop up in our day. But I would go, again, even one step further. Don't just study the Bible. Don't just study church history, but continue today in our own day to read good theology from good teachers. That pattern that we saw, again, it didn't end in the Old New Testament of God judging false teachers and saving his people. It didn't end in the third century with Augustine, or sorry, in the fifth century with Augustine. It didn't end at the Reformation with Luther or Calvin. And it didn't even end in 1936 when the OPC was founded. It continues to today. We want to be part of that great tradition of the church to help future generations in their understanding of what God has revealed about himself in scripture. I don't know about you, but sometimes I feel, when I'm studying church history, like, oh, how great it would have been to have been alive during that time, to be fighting for the doctrine of the Trinity against the Arians, or to be fighting alongside Luther and Calvin during the Reformation, or to be fighting against Machen, against the liberals in the early 20th century. But we are placed in this time right now to have our own fight, to establish and to understand the scriptures and to provide resources for those who will come decades and centuries and generations for us. And today we have more access to great books, to great sermons, and even great podcasts than anyone has ever had before. And I will say today, there are some wonderful theological advancements going on in the church. And I say that term theological advancements in the best sense of the word. I don't mean new theology or changing things from the past or trying to come up with new ideas. When I say theological advancements, I mean digging deeper into scripture, seeing greater connections between what the Bible has revealed throughout the canon and even throughout the different theological disciplines. Just to mention a few that I think are really having a heyday in the theological community today, where there's tons of books and tons of conferences and things coming out that we can all be learning from. First, the idea of what it means to approach the Bible as God's word. What it means that when we approach the scriptures, we're not just reading another book. We are actually reading the revelation of God. These words are God himself speaking to us. That fact should change how we read the Bible. We should not just read the Bible like Moby Dick or like A Tale of Two Cities. There's something different happening when we pick up this book and read it. And there's some great work that's being done in us, giving us a better approach and a better mode of understanding what God is doing when he's revealing himself in scriptures. Another area that is having some just I think some excellent advances in our studies today that are going on is the doctrine of sanctification. How God is actually growing his people through Christ and through the Spirit. And how that idea of our ongoing holiness and being built up in Christ is connected to all the other areas of our of our Salvation for so for so many years the Protestant Church and reformed churches have stood for justification We have stood for the truths of our forgiveness of sins But I think really now we are starting to dig in and make great connections about how holiness is Utterly important to the Christian life and how it's connected to everything else that God is doing for us And then lastly, I would say, one more that's really having a great time in research and throughout the evangelical and the reformed communities, this idea of what heaven and eternity will look like. And why it's really not about what we're going to do or what the world will look like, but what it means to be with Jesus. What it means that in the new heavens and the new earth, The greatest part of our enjoyment will be in the presence of God, that we will actually see God and experience Him. There is some wonderful work that is going on in this area. These are just a few that I'm bringing up. There are really good books and good talks on every topic coming out almost every year. Really being written on at any level if you're just beginning your theological journey if you're just beginning to really Dig in and understand with the Bible or if you've been studying the Bible for 50 years and you've read a thousand theology books There is still so much good work that is coming out I would encourage you if you're if you're looking for one of these topics if you're looking for some resources on anything that strikes your fancy Let me know. Let me let me be your librarian. You'll probably have to hold me back. I because I'll probably give you 10 times more recommendations that you really want than you really want, but please come to me. I would love to help all of us continue and to take our place in the long line of history to begin to prepare for future generations so that someday they will look back and say, man, that early 21st century crowd, they really did a great job of preparing us for the struggles that we are now facing. So in conclusion, I would just ask that we would be on guard for false teachings, but don't fear. Don't be afraid of false teachers in the church because we have the scriptures. We have the spirit. We have the church to guide us. We have ministers and we have elders. And you yourselves also have a part in keeping the church accountable. Ask questions. Come to me. Come to the elders. Make sure that what's taught here from this pulpit matches our confession. And even more importantly, matches what the Bible says. Don't let me and don't let the other elders get away with weak explanations on difficult topics. When you ask a question that's one of those difficult, hard questions and we kind of give you like a short little answer, don't let us get away with that. Press us. Keep pressing us until you understand. Maybe you don't always agree, but don't settle until you know what we're actually saying. But I would say most importantly, constantly look for Christ to reveal himself in the Bible. He himself will guide you to the truth through his spirit. He has done it throughout Israel's history. He did it through the apostles and the church. He has done it for 2000 years and he continues to do it and he will continue to do it throughout the ages. He will do it for all his people. Jesus protects and preserves his people by his word from any false teacher. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, you are so gracious to us, even to reveal yourself in words, in language that we as finite and weak human beings can understand, and then to commit those words to be written down so that they can be passed down for generations and generations, so that we would continue to be able to know you. And then, Lord, to give us ministers and the church and our tradition to understand that, to not have to restart and try and figure things out on our own. Each new generation, Lord, you are so gracious and so giving to us. We honor you and we exalt you and we thank you for what you have done. And most importantly, we thank you for revealing yourself in Christ. Lord, as we now move to the table, we ask that you would reveal yourself in your sacraments, that your word as it is made now visible and tangible to us, that you would continue to nourish us and feed us. In your son's name we pray. Amen.