Going back to 2 Peter, we're going to pick up in Chapter 2, but before we do that, I just want to make a comment on the beginning of this book, really the beginning of this book and the beginning of 1 Peter. And that's the fact that Peter refers to himself in both books as Simon Peter, one of the One of the men that I read after had made a comment about this and about how it was kind of. Well, it was kind of a comfort to read that the way Peter referred to himself and also at how odd it was that he would refer to himself in that way. We know that he that Peter's name originally in the Hebrew, his name was Simon. It wasn't until later on that Jesus changed his name, said you're going to be Peter now. Simon was a pretty average matter of fact, the source I read said that it was as common a name as any name in the Hebrew language. It was Simeon and in the Greek form of that name is Simon. And then whenever Jesus finds Peter, he gives him or finds Simon, he gives him a new name and he calls him Peter. And he says that as Peter refers to himself in these two letters, That it's funny that he would refer to himself as Simon Peter as if there were. And whether or not this is the reason why he did it, I don't know. But while you look at the life of Peter that we have recorded, you find a tendency for Peter to struggle to go back to his. Sinfulness, silliness, messing up his his, I guess, presumption that he would not deny Christ when Christ told him that he would. His cowardliness and unfaithfulness that he did deny Christ when he did. But also we find the Peter that stands up at Pentecost and preaches a powerful sermon when the Holy Spirit comes down like it had never come down before. And so The comment was that you find a great balance in Peter that we can all relate to. And the fact that he sees himself as Simon Peter, he still remembers and still fights with the part of him that was that old Simon. And yet there's still Peter, the new man that Christ is transforming, that continues to grow. And another comment he made and a reason why he would say that he says you never find a single time in any of Paul's letters where he refers to himself as Saul Paul. This never happens. But it's the same thing as Peter saying Simon Peter, combining his old name with the new. And so whether or not that's intentionally there for that reason, I don't know. But I thought the illustration was a good one and I thought it fits, especially in line with what all Peter's saying here in this second epistle. So we talked about this morning, number one, If you're going to stand firm, if you're going to be able to resist counterfeits, false prophets, number one, you've got to know your salvation. Number two, you've got to know your Bible. And then the third one, as we get into chapter two, and we probably will not hit all four today. The third one is you've got to know your enemy. You've got to know your adversary. Chapter two, the entire chapter is spent. on identifying these false prophets, we're only going to look closely. At the character qualities that are given, even though we're going to outline the the the chapter, and then maybe we'll go back and look a little closer later on. In a. Little skeletal framework, the second chapter of Peter starts off this way, he says, there's always been false prophets. and you'll recognize them by their character and conduct. The first couple of verses go over. As a matter of fact, the whole chapter goes over that. The first couple of verses talks about the fact that false prophets will deceive many people. Let me take the first idea. There have always been. That's what he says here in verse 1. But there were false prophets also among the people. He's referring back to Israel there. Even as there shall be false prophets or false teachers among you, who privilege shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them and bring upon themselves swift destruction. And so the reality is that Peter lays out for us today, just like it was for them back then, is that there are false teachers among us. There are false teachers among us. Now, he's not talking about atheists here, but he's talking about folks among us that would fit in, that would easily be able to deceive people, It would be kind of hard, I would think, maybe for somebody to step into a church and get up and preach a message about the fact that God does not exist and all of a sudden have a great following, follow him out the building and start. I mean, that would be really difficult to do. Probably would not ever happen, even if the people, I don't know about this, but it would seem even preposterous if the people halfway weren't even born again there. I mean, the idea that something so opposed to why we're here and what we claim would do anything like that. And so the false prophets, the false teachers. Have enough truth to look genuine. But enough air to be destructive, enough truth to be genuine, enough air to be destructive. Now, let me say this. And I don't know if I'll be able to develop it all the way. But an interesting thing about how Peter identifies these people, I said it this morning, he never says a word about what they believe. And it's not that that's unimportant, but he never says a word about what they're preaching, what they're teaching, anything that they're saying. Peter says this. If you're going to identify a false prophet or a false teacher, you're going to do it through their conduct, through their conduct. Why do I even say that? Well, I say that because, and this is just a, you know, maybe it could be said better, but there is a difference between a dummy and a false prophet. There is. And that's probably true. I mean, there's a difference between someone that does not preach everything just right and a false prophet. Now, if we talk about the first one, if we're looking for somebody that preaches everything just right, well, we can all hang it up and go home because that's nobody. That doesn't mean we don't have a standard. Obviously, we do. But a lot of the times we get an idea that if somebody preaches something a little different than what we believe or what we know to be truth, then that all of a sudden automatically makes them some wicked false professor. Maybe you do, maybe you don't. But there are plenty of folks who do. On the one hand, I want to be sure to say this, we never celebrate error. It's never admirable to be to be an error, no matter how sincere you are, no matter how noble cause or whatever it is you're trying to do, no matter how likable somebody is. It's never a noble thing to be an error. But let me say this, it is always a better word for this, but a rebukeable thing. There's always rebukeable to call someone that the Lord has anointed a heresy when in fact, they're just ignorant. Now, that may not mean much to you. It may not make any difference one way or the other. but our attitudes toward folks that do not hold the truth the way that we do, understand the truth the way that we do. I'm not up here saying we ought to get him up here to preach for us. I'm not up here saying we ought to put our arm around him and accept what everybody believes is truth. But I am up here saying that just because somebody doesn't preach the truth as we know it does not make them a teacher sent from hell that Satan's using to deceive the crowd. There is a such thing as an Apollos that needs an Aquila and Priscilla to come along and to teach them. And so there is a difference. And I think this is one of the reasons why Peter would go straight to motives and actions here rather than try to fight off every little false doctrine that might have been placed. There's a difference in being ignorant and in being malicious. There's a difference in being ignorant and in just being outright ungodly, trying to bring a whole crowd astray. And I think that's part of the reason why Peter does what he does here. And if We know what to look for. It's helpful. And if we don't. Really, if we fall off on the one end to where we call everybody a false prophet, that didn't get it all just right. then by the time we run to the end of that trail, everybody ends up being false because nobody's got it all right. So again, I don't say that in the sense that we ought to just throw up our hands and accept whatever comes along. But I say that in the sense that we got to be discerning. We have to be charitable. But to distinguish a false prophet, we look at their conduct and their conduct is not working really of their motives, their character qualities. So there have always been false prophets. And you're going to recognize them by their conduct. Number one, there's verses one through two. These false prophets are going to deceive a lot of people. They're going to deceive a lot of people back then and now they're deceiving a lot of people. And we are foolish if we think we're above that deception. If we think we're above deception, we're foolish because Peter didn't say. They're going to come and they're going to deceive those ignoramuses that don't know how to think and get fooled all the time anyway. It's not what he said. He said they're going to deceive many people, a lot of people. And so he spent the first chapter trying to trying to equip us to where we could withstand these teachers. And then he says, one thing to just keep in mind, this is verses three through nine. The judgment of God is certain concerning these people, these false prophets will be judged. It's certain there's no question about that. And then after that, and this is where we're going to spend our time this afternoon and verses 10 through 19. He gives us. character qualities to look for in these false prophets. One thing that's pretty interesting about this list that we get is that it is almost. As you go down principle by principle, completely opposite of the list that we get in chapter one, that we ought to be adding to our faith virtue and to our virtue knowledge and goes on and on and on. All these that we get for the false professors, it's almost as if he put these lists there opposing one another. And he may have, I don't know. But these are the fruits of the false prophets. The other ones are the fruit to the ones who are men who are saved, who are making the calling election sure being fruitful. So starting verse 10, I'm not going to read the passage straight down. I've just made these this list because I thought it might be easier to work through. First character of a. False prophet. Number one. This comes from the expanded translation, Kenneth Weiss, the word study book, and it translated this way, number one, These men live in hot pursuit of the flesh or their depraved nature. And they're pursuing it in the area of defiling, passionate desires, and so if you want to be able to spot a false prophet. He's going to be immoral. An immoral person. Again. Bad doctrine leads to bad living and you don't have to be a false prophet to fall into that. But you will almost, I say almost, always find that someone who is a counterfeit, somebody who's, as we'll go on and later find, who's kind of promoting religion or spirituality for their own benefit is always an immoral person. Doesn't mean that they're immoral in every area of their life, but there are certain areas in particular that they're almost, you will always find immorality. Second thing. These false prophets despise authority. They have no respect for authority. They're their own men. They do their own thing. They make up their own rules. They don't really care what's gone before or they don't really care what the boundaries have been. They're making their own way. If you find somebody that is above authority, above rebuke, above anything like that, they're just Well, the next two are they're presumptuous and they're arrogant. They're just arrogant and doing their own thing. You can just about bet it's a false prophet. Just about bet it's a false prophet. That doesn't mean there's no such thing as a prideful preacher. There is. But I don't think he'll stay that way his whole life. I don't think he'll stay that way his whole life. And so if as a defining quality, this person despises authority, presumptuous and arrogant. The next thing is they utter blasphemies about things that they do not understand. All this is coming straight out of the chapter here. They utter blasphemies about things they do not understand. If I could say it in a way that we would usually know it, they're just a bunch of know-it-alls. They know all the answers to all the secrets that nobody else knows anything about. They found this new way or they finally figured out what this meant. Or they've, you know, written something to really unlock your understanding of this or that or this or that. They've just got all the answers. They're know-it-alls. And they're actually ignorant about what they're talking about. Next thing, they're materially driven. They deem luxurious living a pleasure. Obviously, everybody that likes luxury is not a false professor. I mean, everybody likes to be comfortable. Everybody likes to be... to feel well and all that, but the whole idea here is that they do what they do for the luxurious benefits of what they're doing. Now, as the list goes on, and while I wouldn't try to peg anybody in particular as far as anybody by name, it doesn't take very long to at least start finding some of the obvious ones. You got people all over TV that can cast out demons and heal this. Heal that. And as we'll come to one of these down here, you know, in the name of Jesus, they command these demons to do whatever and these demons. And again, as I say all that, I don't say that with any idea that y'all are sitting at home glued to your TV seeing who's going to do what next and you're ready to go join up with the church. That's a that's part of it. That's part of what we're talking about. And that's pretty recognizable. There's some other subtleties that come in, really, that get promoted through things that we, and this would not be necessarily a person as it would be a message or an underlying theme, maybe, in some of the things that we see, underlying thoughts, things that would change the way that we think in movies and shows and books and just popular television. things that just get promoted as, well, it wasn't too long ago, when Oprah Winfrey came out with this New Earth deal. And it wasn't really her, it was another guy that Eckhart told me or whatever. And it was some Eastern pantheistic religion that they were promoting, saying, well, you know what, you can hold on to this and you can be Christian, you can be Hindu, you can be whatever. This works the whole way. And to make it even better, Jim Carrey was interviewed to kind of to kind of promote the fact that it worked for him. If you know who that is, that's you know, I just said that for the laugh of it. But. People buy into that. People buy into that. Well, you know, Oprah used to be a Christian and she talks about God and and and she's she practices this New Earth stuff. Well, again, for me to sit up here and say that in a church and not even really being able to say it in a convincing way sounds kind of dumb. But there have been thousands and thousands of people that buy into that mess every single day. And it comes into our lives not so openly as if Oprah Winfrey comes in and says, here, try this. But it comes in in different ways. Things that we like. Shows that we watch that we enjoy. songs that we listen to that we enjoy, books that we read, ideas that we have, interpreting different experiences that we have in certain ways. It may not be a particular person, but it may just be a thought that's that's made its way in. But if you're not careful, we start thinking unbiblical ideas and unbiblical things due to these people, by the way, these false prophets are not said to be you know, silly, stupid people, they know what they're doing. They know what they're doing. They know how to they know how to say what they're saying. But if you can identify the person again, the. Immoral, the second is they are the next one is they. Interested in catching unstable souls is what Peter says, they seek easy prey. You've just gone through an emotional experience. You've just had a loss. You've just had a high. You've just had something. And they seek easy, easy prey. Somebody that's looking for a good experience or somebody who just wants one thing or the other to happen. Their hearts are completely exercised in covetousness. They're habitually greedy. They're money driven. They use they utter extravagant things about their own characters that are false. They're super Christians. They're beyond. sin, some of them. And we've heard about these kind of folks. I've heard about these kind of folks, guys that act like that since the day that they were saved, they had just just don't, you know, struggle with anything anymore. They put that lust away a long time ago. They put that drink away a long time ago. They put this away, that away, all that. They don't struggle with anything else anymore since since they came to know the Lord. Well, that's just not true. That's just not true. Peter says these guys have all these extravagant things they say about themselves and they're just not true. Next thing, they are alluring by means of depraved cravings. In other words, they capitalize on your depravity. It'd be nice to know every now and then, you know, sometimes we all get into a place where it would be nice to know that we don't actually need to resist the thing that we're resisting. You have a tough time with temptation. You have a tough time fighting off the flesh. And something comes along, or someone comes along, or however that goes, and entices you and says, well, you know what, you really don't have to worry about that anyway. That's not even really a big deal. Or whatever it is, they capitalize on depraved cravings. Now that, for somebody that was trying to seek a holy life, that might go. But for somebody who just didn't care, they just stamp a religious name on a pagan practice, and folks feel good about it. And they're swept away. Now, here's the end to it. Here's the last thing. And this is a to me, as I read this, this was the most powerful statement made about the whole thing. It says they promise liberty while they themselves are slaves to corruption, they promise liberty while they themselves are slaves to corruption. Here's why. Here's why I thought that was powerful, especially for young people. for everybody, but especially whenever you're young, and here's why. Because as you get older, you start to be able to experience a little more freedom. I don't remember how old we were, but eventually when we were growing up, we got to the point to where instead of going to bed at 7, we got to go to bed at 9, and then eventually we got to go to bed around 10, and these boundaries began to get pushed back. Whenever we first started driving, we had to be in by a certain time. But after a while, we were able to come in a little later, moved off and went to college. And some of those boundaries were taken back even further. And so the freedom that you get to experience becomes more and more and more and more. And you kind of interpret that freedom by the removing of boundaries. I don't have to explain to my mom why I bought this. I don't have to explain to my dad why I got home at this time. I'm in a completely different state at a school where nobody knows but me. There's freedom in that. I don't have to worry about it. But I'm going to tell you what happens. Eventually, you start kind of putting two and two together, and you start getting addicted to this whole idea of freedom, and you start erasing all these boundaries to wake up one day and find out that you have not attained freedom, but you've built a life full of chaos. That's what these men do. That's what we do to ourselves. Can I say that? That's what we do to ourselves when we make ourselves vulnerable to these people's teachings. It looks as if they have liberty, but in reality, they are slaves to their own corruption. We start erasing boundaries and it looks as if we've got liberty. It's enjoyable. We like it at the time until we wake up one day and find out not only are we slaves to our own corruption, but we've built a life that's full of chaos. No bounds, no reason, no anything. And it's just one big mess. That's the characteristic of one of these false prophets. It all looks good at the beginning until you find out what you've done away with was the foundation and everything else has come crumbling in on top of your head. And you just it won't work. It won't work. And so freedom exists only within the realm of boundaries. You take all those boundaries away and all you have is chaos. Any system that would promote boundless whatever is promoting chaos. It's just the way it is. That's not just some philosophical deal where I'm trying to make a point. That's reality. And, you know, a lot of people here know that you run away from rules long enough and you find out. That you needed all those, a lot of them anyway, that you were trying to get away from. So that's their character. Next in this chapter, we'll talk about their fate, the fact that they will be destroyed. Again, the rest of this is just a skeletal outline of 2 Peter. Chapter three, Peter says you need to remember a few things. First thing is there's always going to be skeptics. That's verse three and four. Always going to be skeptics. Never going to be a time when there's not skeptics. They will always be here. Second one is the earth has already been judged before God sent the waters, the flood destroyed the earth one time and it will be judged again. Next, God is not on our timeline and his agenda is not our agenda. His agenda is not our agenda and he's not on our timeline. then Christ will return when nobody's expecting it. And the last thing is, all this should produce in us a desire to grow in spiritual maturity. If Christ is going to return as a thief in the night, and He's called you by glory and virtue, that's in chapter 1. We didn't get to the details in chapter 1 on that. By glory and virtue. And He's called you to be virtuous. He's called you to be self-controlled. He's called you to be able to stand against these false professors. He's called you to produce fruits that are pleasing to Him. If you know He's coming back, but you don't know when, He says that ought to urge you on to holy living. That ought to urge you on or spur you on to holy living. That ought to spur you on to wanting to grow in knowledge. and in grace and in spiritual maturity. And so that's what the book of Second Peter is all about. Now, again, I didn't preach this message this morning, this afternoon with the idea that it was going to be an expository message and you would understand everything there is in Second Peter. This is a bare bones outline. It will be very helpful for you if you go back and read Second Peter. I'm not saying you have to, but I'm saying to be really helpful. And you can remember that Peter's trying to tell you four things. Number one, you need to know you're saved. Number two, you need to know your Bible. Number three, you need to know your adversary. Number four, you need to know your prophecy. You need to know that Christ is coming back. And if you can get those four things in your head while you're reading 2 Peter, you'll get the message of 2 Peter. You can fill in the rest yourself. I'm going to tell you that I always, always, Enjoy going through and doing these outlines just for that reason for myself give myself a roadmap to go through and be able to understand Where I'm going and how I'm getting there and then I want to say this, you know, I've said this before but You don't have to be called to preach to do that Any of you could have done what I've got up here All you need is a little bit of time really and you don't have to take that much time You can do a little bit at a time But if you're interested in understanding a deeper way or even understanding in a memorable way. That I would encourage you, you know, get your Bible out and look for the big picture, look for the big picture first. Once you see the forest, then start looking at the trees, but try to get a bit, try to get a glimpse of the forest before you start going in and looking at the leaves. It will help you tremendously, not only in understanding what you're reading, but in accurately interpreting what you're reading as you read it. The whole idea that there's. Good interpretation. There's no. Let me get here so I don't mess it up. Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation, there's no secrets here. There's no special power that the Pope has or that I have that you guys don't have when it comes to interpreting your Bible. Now, obviously, the Holy Spirit, whenever you're I'm not talking about preaching, I'm talking about studying is what I'm talking about. And so I would encourage you to go through, read 2 Peter, keep those thoughts in mind, take notes, do it more than once. And I promise you, if you're diligent about that, you will grow in your understanding of that book. You'll get excited about sitting down to read that book. I promise you that'll happen. Let's pray.