For this evening's scripture lesson, would you join me in turning to 2 Peter 2. Tonight we are studying especially verses 10 through 22 of this chapter, but I'll read the whole chapter to begin with, partly to help remind us of what we considered here two weeks ago, partly because in the ESV at least, verse 10 has a sentence running into and out of it. And partly because I would like you to sense afresh the full impact, the kind of righteous fury that's behind this chapter as we enter into a study of it tonight. So 2 Peter 2, reading now the full chapter. But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you. who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the master who bought them, bringing upon themselves swift destruction. And many will follow their sensuality, and because of them, the way of truth will be blasphemed. And in their greed, they will exploit you with false words. Their condemnation from long ago is not idle, and their destruction is not asleep. For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to chains of gloomy darkness to be kept until the judgment, if he did not spare the ancient world, but preserve Noah, a herald of righteousness with seven others, when he brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly, if by turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes, he condemned them to extinction, making them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly, And if he rescued righteous lot, greatly distressed by the sensual conduct of the wicked, for as that righteous man lived among them day after day, he was tormenting his righteous soul over their lawless deeds that he saw and heard. 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 passion and despise authority. Bold and willful, they do not tremble as they blaspheme the glorious ones, whereas angels, though greater in might and power, do not pronounce a blasphemous judgment against them before the Lord. But these, like irrational animals, creatures of instinct, born to be caught and destroyed, blaspheming about matters of which they are ignorant, will also be destroyed in their destruction. Suffering wrong is the wage for their wrongdoing. They count it pleasure to revel in the daytime. They are blots and blemishes, reveling in their deceptions while they feast with you. They have eyes full of adultery, insatiable for sin. They entice unsteady souls. They have hearts trained in greed, accursed children. Forsaking the right way, they have gone astray. They have followed the way of Balaam, the son of Baor, who loved gain from wrongdoing, but was rebuked for his own transgression. A speechless donkey spoke with human voice and restrained the prophet's madness. These are waterless springs and mists driven by a storm. For them, the gloom of utter darkness has been reserved. For speaking loud boasts of folly, they entice my sensual passion to the flesh, those who are barely escaping from those who live in error. They promise them freedom. They themselves are slaves of corruption. For whatever overcomes a person, to that he is enslaved. For if, after they have escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overcome, the last state has become worse for them than the first. For it would have been better for them never to have known the way of righteousness than after knowing it to turn back from the holy commandment delivered to them. What the true proverb says has happened to them. The dog returns to its own vomit. And the sow, after washing herself, returns to wallow in the mire. So far, our reading of God's Word tonight. Let's pray for His blessing on our study of it. Heavenly Father, we thank You for this timeless Word, breathed out by You, As your spirit carried along, holy men, we thank you, Father, for your providence in which all your decrees are fulfilled, including your plans for who would be looking at this page this night in this place. Help us to believe, Father, that this is a word to us and cause us to grow thereby. In Christ we pray, amen. Well, was the righteous fury too much? This is certainly a heated passage. And for those who are accustomed to imagining things about a self-invented God, as many are in this modern age, the kind of rebuke, the kind of fury, the kind of ultimate judgment that 2 Peter 2 speaks of is unfathomable. that the wicked would be so judged, that the wrath of God would be so outpoured, that the eternal outcome would be hell. with all of its fire. Granted, there are a lot of metaphors that try to express to us what hell really is, but that doesn't make them less awful. The idea of living an eternity under the judgment of God, whether you speak of it as fire or darkness or being outside or being rotted with worms, is a horrible thought. And this is a chapter of such fire and fury awaiting the opponents of Jesus Christ, who has spoken through the apostles like Peter, and who is now being opposed by false teachers. Now in our chapter, Peter is not only describing such teachers for you, and describing their future terrible doom for you, but he's explaining why they're gonna receive that doom. He's explaining why, if you understand the sinfulness of their hearts, the ugliness of their tactics, the darkness of their betrayal, if you understand the preciousness of what they are trying to destroy, then you will understand the kind of doom of which our chapter speaks. Let me summarize what Peter is teaching us, especially in verses 10 through 22, under these three points. First, false teachers are doomed because they're depraved. That's verses 10 through 16. Second, false teachers are doomed because they're dangerous, verses 17 through 19. And third, false teachers are doomed because they're disloyal to Christ. That's verses 20 through 22. Depraved, dangerous, and disloyal, and therefore doomed. In the first place then in verses 10 through 16, false teachers are doomed because they're depraved, because of their wicked moral character. We're jumping into verse 10, but really this builds off of what Peter was speaking of in verse nine, when he assured us that the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials. Example, Noah, example, Lot. but also assured us that he knows how to keep the unrighteous under punishment or ready for punishment until the day of judgment. Now, who are the false teachers he has in mind here? He clearly has some specific ones, as he mentions verse 10, especially those who indulge in these following sins. Peter is not writing in a vacuum. Peter is writing to people who are being seduced with a false version of Christianity, that is contrary to what Peter and the other apostles have teached, apparently a kind of Christianity that became dangerously popular in the first couple of centuries after Christ, which focused on being super spiritual, which was melded with a kind of Greek philosophy, which did not take the ethical demands of daily living very seriously. And part of the doctrine that propped that up was the idea that, you know, resurrection's not a big deal. The second judgment isn't really something to worry about. In particular, Jesus isn't coming back. And therefore, it doesn't matter how you live. There will not be a day of reckoning. And that idea then, that anti-apostolic belief that Jesus isn't coming back, and so it doesn't matter how we live, and so we can wallow in what we want and never be held accountable, That's what's driving these condemnations in second Peter chapter two. Now, what is the character of these false teachers like? Well, description is kind of scattered throughout the chapter. The first way I describe them though is sensual. They are driven by bodily appetites and pleasure. And that shouldn't surprise us. If these men are devoid of genuine spiritual life, that bodily appetites would be what drives them. Uh, first of all, there is a kind of sexual desire and, uh, and drivenness behind them. Verse 10 refers to the defiling passions. They indulge the lust of defiling passion. That reminds you of what was said a few verses before that about Sodom and Gomorrah. The version of this passage that appears in the letter of Jude goes into this connection a little more deeply, the connection between false teachers and the men of Sodom. But the idea is that these false teachers are Creatures of instinct, they're driven by their urges, however sophisticated they might look. And verse 14 describes them similarly. They have eyes full of adultery, insatiable for sin. Literally, in the original language here, it's they have eyes full of an adulterous. So the idea is with these false teachers, these self-appointed, higher learning celebrity teachers, that they will walk into a church, walk into a room, eager to dispense their knowledge, of course, but they've kind of got one eye out for, oh, who are the ladies in the room? And I wonder if maybe a moment might arise of opportunity, and I wonder where their minds might be too. You see, they're thinking about that constantly, eyes full of. eyes full of an adulteress, and the verse goes on to speak of them enticing others too. But it's not just that kind of sensuality, also they're driven by food and drink, as verse 13 says. They revel in the daytime, that is while all the pagans are out getting drunk at night, these false teachers have so sufficiently satisfied themselves that it doesn't matter how they live, they carry their drunken parties right on into the day. And they also attend your feasts and feast with you, that verse says. They're bold then in their dissipation. Verse 12 describes them as something subhuman even in all this sensuality. They're irrational animals, creatures of instinct, born to be caught and destroyed. Sometimes the Bible describes such men devoid of spiritual life and driven by dark impulses to animals. Even our mortality can be spoken of that way. Man in his pomp does not remain, he is like the beasts that perish, Psalm 49. But the idea is, if you are not redeemed by Jesus Christ, if you are still in your fallenness, then it is impossible for you to live up to the image of God for which you were created. right, that knowledge, righteousness, and true holiness in which we get to reflect our creator, in which we have a kind of purpose and dignity that goes beyond animals in the zoo, that goes beyond common people who eat, drink, and be married because tomorrow we die. There's something less than human about the kinds of lives lived by those who wallow in bodily passions. In addition to being sensual, though, we also read a number of things about how proud they are, Verse 10, they despise authority. The verse goes on to say they are bold and willful, meaning they are reckless. They do not tremble as they blaspheme the glorious ones. That's how arrogant, how reckless they are. They don't mind blaspheming glorious ones. Now, there've been a lot of guesses as to which glorious ones Peter might mean here. Is he talking about important men? Is he talking about angels, maybe fallen angels? That does seem to be the case in Jude's version of this same warning, that we're talking about fallen angels. But keep in mind that just because you have closely related books that probably even borrow from each other, like Matthew, Mark, and Luke, or in this case, like Jude and 2 Peter, that doesn't mean every word and phrase will serve the same purpose. You have different apostles giving you these words for their own context and making their own arguments. And so Peter's not bound by Jude, you might say, from whom he seems to be borrowing and whose argument he seems to be following here in 2 Peter 2. And so in Peter, it's just glories. They do not mind blaspheming the glories. And that doesn't necessarily have to be men, angels, or demons. That could simply be glorious things. Maybe some have even proposed the glorious works of Christ or attributes of Christ or offices of Christ, whatever it is. When it comes to serious things, holy things, these false teachers are arrogantly reckless. They're not serious about things with which they should be serious. They're also deceptive. That's another character trait. You can see it, I think, in verse 13. They count it pleasure to revel in the daytime, their blots and blemishes, reveling in their deceptions as they feast with you. They blend in. They're fooling you. They are passing themselves off as Christians, and that's similar to what we read back up in verse one. There will be false teachers among you who secretly bring in destructive heresies. In other words, when you get the next terrible news about which pastor or author or whatever turned out to be a horrible heretic or somebody who was scandalous in sin, it's likely it'll surprise you. You don't get to see these heretics or predators in waiting because you can only see these things if you get a glimpse of their heart sometimes. One more thing, they're described then as sensual, as proud, as deceptive. They're also described as greedy. Verse three already told us last time that in their greed, they will exploit you with false words. In other words, they will tell you messages. They will tell you versions of Christianity that you want to hear and that you want to buy. Verse 14 now in our text says they have hearts trained in greed. The word for training is the one from which we get our English word gymnasium. It's like they have a muscle memory in greed. They are reflexively self-interested as soon as the subject comes up. And then most extensively, their greed is illustrated by the comparison to Balaam in verses 15 and 16. Remember Balaam, the prophet for prophets. He was the one that's with a house full of treasure, was bribed. by Balak, king of Moab, to come and put a curse on Israel, to try to drive a wedge between God and God's people, so that bereft of God's blessing, the king of Moab could march in and destroy them. If you know that story, you know that Balaam failed in his diabolical mission. He failed to curse the people of Israel. Every time he opened his mouth, God forced him to announce a blessing instead. Eventually, Balaam not only was restrained, as with the talking donkey on the road, telling him he'd better only say what he was allowed, restrained by God causing him to bless rather than curse, but also he was ultimately slain after some of his uglier plans had already come to fruition. There's a similarity, Peter's saying, between that Balaam story and what's happening now after Christ in this New Testament age with false Christian teachers. You see, the point about Balaam is that for money, he's willing to destroy God's people. God's promises, God's people, that is not as important to him as the honor and wealth that the false teacher gets. And so we're saying these false teachers, on account of this character, sensual, proud, deceptive, and greedy, they are headed for doom, like those senseless animals being hunted down, like those who, verse 13 says, suffer wrong or harm as the wage for their wrong or harm doing. They receive bad wages from their own bad schemes is the idea there, like a bank robber who opens the sack only to find out that all of his effort was just to steal a sack of straw. Now, as we apply this, let me say, Christians, please be discerning with those who offer to teach you. Here I am teaching you, so you can go ahead and be skeptical if you wish. It's important that we not only follow the example of the Berean Jews who in Acts 17 examine the scriptures to see these things are so, but also that we are perceptive about our teachers, especially the word of God keeps pointing us again and again to their character, like in these verses. Now I know you can't always see the pride, the lust, the greed festering in hearts, especially in the heart of a man who's well-trained and looks and sounds so godly. But that's what we need to be alert to the possibility of. Let me say, as we talk about discernments, to be careful with Peter's description because Peter is heaping up descriptions that, if you put them all together, they're almost impossibly villainous, right? Like some kind of Disney cartoon or something. Nobody maybe seems to be this awful about everything. You don't have to be this bad about everything. Peter's merely trying to help you see the ugliness of these false teachers' sins. Maybe only some of this will come to light for this false teacher or that false teacher. Keep in mind, these false teachers can pass as Christians, and some of them for quite a while. We need to be warned against teachers who have these kinds of tendencies, who let this kind of character slip sometimes. Now maybe you're thinking, okay, preacher, I'm still not sure I know anybody who looks like this. Where would you find them? Well, of course, you might find them in the church hiding among you. But let me also suggest as a pretty accurate parallel to Peter's own situation, you're likely to find them among the self-appointed authors, bloggers, broadcasters, and celebrities in the Christian world, men who are self-funded, self-appointed, effectively unaccountable, and who are somehow managing to profit handsomely from what they're teaching. And once you start thinking of it that way, you are alert to many possible examples over which you should exercise discernment. One bit of counsel I sometimes give to Christians who are concerned about how many teachers turn out to be false and wicked and how do we discern who we're supposed to be listening to is I'll sometimes advise you the best place to look for instruction is from Christians who are dead. The reason is they've already run their race. They've already been tested to the end. They are already as open a book as they're ever going to be. Saints that God has blessed the church with are already dead. And so rather than wondering whether your favorite celebrity is going to jump off into heresy next year, you can follow in the steps of faithful men whose writings survived them and through which the Lord still blesses his church. Well, false teachers are doomed then because they're depraved, in verses 10 through 16. Secondly, false teachers are doomed because they're dangerous. Verses 17, 18, and 19. I mean, they're dangerous to God's true children. We've seen this elsewhere in 2 Peter 2. They will exploit you, verse 3 warned. They will entice the unsteady among you, verse 14 says. And they do harm or wrongdoing in verses 13 and 15. That is, they are damaging to God's children. Now the danger they represent is described in verse 17 as that of a waterless spring and a mist driven by a storm. Understand that in the ancient world, a waterless spring was more than just disappointing. When your journey and your livestock and your life sometimes depended on finding water at the place you expected it to be, a waterless spring was a cheat, a deception, That could even be deadly. But they're worse than worthless, you see. They got your hopes up. They made you chase a mirage. But then also they're mists driven by a storm. This adds the idea of obscurity and fog or danger. Jude, who's talking about some similar images, but making slightly different points at this point in his epistle, uses the expression hidden reefs, right? Like a ship that can't see the danger that's ahead. That's the idea Peter means with this mist or fog of danger. False teachers can confuse you, distract you, worry you about things you don't need to worry about. They can cloud your thinking, blind you to danger, and make you unsure of where you should be pointed. What they do according to verse 18 is they pray on members of the church, we would call them baby Christians, who have barely escaped from the world. They're barely escaping those who live in error, meaning they barely made it out of Gentile paganism. These are babes in Christ, they're glad to be cleansed, they're glad to be set free, they're glad to have a clean slate in Christ Jesus, but they're also easy pickings for predators because they're untrained in the truth. They are unpracticed in righteousness. They're probably still carrying a lot of worldly baggage that has to be unlearned, old habits, old cravings, old assumptions. And meanwhile, these false teachers are picking off their souls like the predators that follow the weak on the fringes of the herd. Now, how do they do that? How do they successfully prey upon these spiritual infants? Well, verse 18 says, they speak loud boasts of folly. You know, sometimes people just say the same thing, however ridiculous it is, loudly enough, confidently enough, and long enough that it apparently becomes true in the consensus of the people who are hearing it. That is loud boasts of folly. They also entice by sensual passions. Look, people who are coming to Christ in the ancient world were doing so in a Greek and Roman world where there are brothels on every street corner, where there are some very difficult habits to break, where there is not a cultural consensus on any kind of decency and modesty, and so appealing to that sensuality, a false teacher could say, well, you know, You don't need to take it that seriously. We don't need to get hung up on how many times you slipped and stopped by the brothel this week. You're under grace, maybe they would say. Or there's no day of judgment anyway, they might say. And so they're using sensuality to appeal to these young Christians. They also offer them freedom, verse 19 says. They promise them freedom even though they're slaves and even though they're bringing slavery. If you could look into these false teachers' lives, if you could look into their hearts through the blinds, as it were, you could see that they're actually slaves, slaves of their own passions. And to get out of that kind of slavery, you don't cast off the law of God and you don't, you know, wallow in sin. It sounds strange to the world, but the Apostle Paul has it right. True freedom comes in slavery to God. That's his argument in Romans 6, and Peter would agree. Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? It's hard for the natural man to believe this, but human beings are actually more happy and more functional and more free when they are chained by the love of God, taken captive by Christ Jesus when they are slaves of righteousness. And so these false teachers then represent a great danger. And in menacing the people of God, including the maybe vulnerable and gullible among the people of God, they provoke the zeal of God himself. That shouldn't surprise us then how furious the doom is in this passage. As God said in the Old Testament through the prophet Zechariah, he who touches you touches the apple of God's eye. When you mess with his children, you do not know the depths of electing love, you do not know the cost of redemption that is on the heart of God as he defends those children of his. And Jesus shares that same zeal when he says in Luke 17, Temptations are sure to come, but woe to the one through whom they come. It would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck and he were cast into the sea than that he should cause one of these little ones to sin. Now there is plenty of warning here, I hope, for anyone who would be a false teacher or follow a false teacher. But please notice that along the way here, Peter has once again worked in kind of a encouraging digression. We saw this a couple of weeks ago as Peter almost sidetracked himself. He started talking about judgment, but then reflected on how Noah was preserved through judgment and Lot was preserved through judgment. So too here. I think you can see it even in that example again of Balaam. Yes, Balaam was a bad guy. Yes, Balaam had to be restrained. Yes, Balaam was ultimately judged and destroyed. Balaam had to be refuted by a dumb donkey who, if you're following the analogy real closely here, maybe Peter kind of referring to himself. But the whole thing, the whole story is for the sake of Israel. The angel of the Lord interfered for the sake of Israel. That wicked man was stopped on the road. His words were changed. His heart intentions were thwarted. for the sake of Israel so that the covenant blessings of God that were unshakable since Abraham could be reaffirmed for Israel. And then the whole story, you know, Israel didn't know this was happening over the hill or up there on the mountain with the King of Moab at the time. They're told the whole story later because it's for the encouragement of Israel. So too here, even though Peter is giving you some of the righteous fury of God against false teachers who would prey upon people in the church. Peter, like Moses, like God, wants you to have confidence and comfort too. It's not just that God will eventually pay back the wicked, that's true and comforting, but also that God watches over his own. And that those who are genuinely transformed on the inside, who are new creatures in Christ, will not in fact be lost, not in fact, finally, ruinously apostate. Now for those who are apostate, for those who are ultimately disloyal to Christ, the last three verses would apply to them. This is our final point tonight. False teachers are doomed because they're disloyal to Christ. Verses 20 through 22. In other words, these false teachers started out as professing Christians. Verse one says, they brought in destructive heresies. Brought in where? Well, into the church. Peter says, just as prophets were among Israel in the past, so false teachers will be among you. He says in verse three, they will exploit you. The apostle John agrees, there are people who went out from us who were not of us in 1 John 2.19. We read in our text, verse 13, they're feasting with you. And so these are apostates who for a long while appeared to be Christians, but then turned out to be traitors, not just traitors to Peter, not just traitors to the church, but traitors to Christ. We studied that expression a couple of weeks ago in verse one about denying the master who bought them. That has to do with Jesus Christ being betrayed. because he bought them in the sense of separating from the world, cleansing them at least outwardly, privileging them deeply, like those people who tagged along in the time of the Exodus, but who ultimately proved to be strangers to God. They were bought in that outward sense and yet turned on their master who had so blessed them. Now something similar is said in our verses about traitors. Verse 20, they have escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Same as the master bought them, right? But they're again entangled and overcome so that the last state has become worse for them than the first. We're told that they turned back from the holy commandments. that was delivered to them in verse 21. The holy commandment singular probably is the gospel bidding them to believe in Christ. And so because they have turned back from an apparent Christianity, they've turned back from a nominal, credible profession. They've turned back from the holy commandment of repent and believe. As defectors, their guilt is all the greater. As Jesus says in Luke chapter 12, the servant who knew his master's will did not get ready or act according to his will, he'll receive a severe beating. The one who did not know and did what deserved a beating will receive a light beating. Jesus is differentiating levels of guilt based on what you knew. And these traitors, these apostates knew plenty. Like Judas Iscariot, they knew just enough of Jesus. They had just enough familiarity. to be traitors. And so we are warned throughout the scriptures with passages like this in Hebrews 10. If we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins but a fearful expectation of judgment and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries. Anyone who set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy. On the evidence of two or three witnesses, how much worse punishment do you think will be deserved There's the issue in 2 Peter. It'll be deserved punishment by the one who has spurned the son of God and profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified and outraged the spirit of grace. These defectors are likened to dogs and pigs in verse 22. What the true proverb says has happened to them. This is a reference to Proverbs 26, 11. Like a dog that returns to his vomit is a fool who repeats his folly. Both those labels are insulting and condemning. This is the ancient world that Peter's writing in. Dogs are not yet man's best friend. Pigs are not yet of the cute pot-bellied sort that you take to the beach. Both of them are unclean animals who live on garbage, who carry diseases, who are like as not to be feral and dangerous. They're mentioned together also in Matthew 7 when Jesus says, do not give to dogs what is holy, do not throw your pearls before pigs, also using that as an image of people. The point of calling them dogs and pigs is not just to throw around insults though, it's to point out that the true character of these people never really changed. Despite looking like Christians and infiltrating Christians and being in an outward sense bought by the master, The pig still is a pig. The dog still is a dog that returns to its vomit. There was no fundamental change of what they were. Now verse 20 told us they escaped the defilements of the world. So it may well be that these kinds of people had some sort of moral improvements that they showed. Some kind of change that it looked maybe for a while like something real was happening with them. You know, they heard the gospel maybe. like Simon Magus and others who responded to it for a while. They felt new feelings. They turned over a new leaf. They joined a church. They made a resolution. They showed some temporary change. But really, what were they, Peter is saying, is a washed pig. And eventually, a washed pig shows what it is and what it loves. And the mud proves to be irresistible again. Now, I know you're gathered here listening to a biblical sermon on a Sunday night and maybe you feel like we shouldn't be questioning where we stand with the Lord, but I think this passage demands it. With all these terrible warnings, with all these insights into the unchanged and perverse character of men who Maybe you were even self-deceived, but certainly deceived others for a while as to being Christians or not. We need to apply it to ourselves. Look, if you think back to the time where you became a Christian, and really all you look back to is some sort of moral improvement that lasted a little while. Maybe some kind of enthusiasm that, you know, really evaporated pretty quickly. If that's all you're going on, if you've just had this kind of outward taste or outward privilege, how long you think you can keep it up? What the scriptures say is that you need a new nature, a transformation so that you are no longer a slave or a dog or a pig, so that you are united to Christ Jesus by the Spirit of Christ. Because anyone who is in Christ, 2 Corinthians says, is a new creation. The old has passed away, the new has come. If that's really who you are, then you've been crucified with Christ, like Paul says, and it's no longer you who live, but Christ who lives in you. Those who have been fundamentally changed in who they are and what their life is about, these will not turn back. The good work begun in them will be brought to completion as Philippians 1 promises. These will not be lost there, loved with an everlasting love and nothing separates them from that love as Romans 8 promises. Those true and transformed believers will not suffer all this heat and fury and aggravated guilt that is awaiting a reckoning for apostate Christians. And so I urge you tonight to believe these things, to believe the warnings, but also to believe the alternative about transformation in Christ, about becoming a genuine child of God and believer in Christ Jesus. I am urging you to surrender yourself to Christ Jesus in that faith. Trust him to be the one who washes and transforms and truly saves you. Christ gives you a real and lasting cleanness, a real and lasting freedom so that you're not just a washed-up dog or a pig with lipstick, as they say in spiritual terms, a slave to sin, however much you might desperately wish to convince yourself you're free. No, you can actually be sons and daughters of God, the apple of His eye, holy in Christ Jesus. It's worth then examining ourselves through Christ. Tonight. So false teachers are doomed because they're depraved. Because they're dangerous. And because they're disloyal. To Christ. That's the logic of our passage. And what's the goal that our passage has accomplished. Well of course it's warned us right it's warned us not to be false teachers or to follow false teachers. It's also accomplished some comfort that's been woven in as Peter assures us that judgment day will come and that God's true children will be reliably protected. It's also accomplished this, 2 Peter 2 has prepared us And I don't mean the preparation of trying to sniff out heresy everywhere and start these so-called discernment blogs that do nothing but tear down people and raise suspicions and pass judgments. All I mean is this, prepare for the fact that there will be these kinds of false teachers as Peter warned at the beginning. Be aware that the church is a mixed bag. Be alert to the possibility that darkness lurks in the heart, yes, even of those who offer to teach you. be unshaken by apostasy when it does happen, and be unseduced if some teacher or some teaching seems to make it a little easier for you to indulge in sin. But most of all, I think the goal accomplished here in 2 Peter 2 is to help get our thinking and our values straight. To show us one more time, along with the rest of scripture, how bad sin really is, especially the sin of apostasy, of false teaching that seduces the people of Christ. How fearful the reckoning then will be and should be. But also this, how important, how precious the people of God really are. Dear Church of Jesus Christ, you are precious enough that Satan notices you, despises you, and would love to seduce and infiltrate and attack you. But more importantly, you are precious enough to Jesus Christ that he will keep his promises to you. That he will see you through this life and through the judgment that is coming. And he will protect you from false teachers and from anything else that would prey on you. Let's believe that and let's pray. Heavenly Father, we ask that you would please guard your people. Lord, you know our weakness and folly. You know how we can deceive ourselves and you know how our adversary works. Lord, please nurture us in the truth. Help us to be secure and mature in it. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. We conclude with Psalm 5. Hear my words, O Lord. Would you stand please to sing Psalm 5. ♪ Hear my words, O Lord, my God ♪ Listen to my cry, then go ♪ Hear my cry, my King, my God ♪ I will pray to you alone ♪ When the morning comes, O Lord