Please. I hope you bring a hard copy of the Bible. There's just something about it. I understand people who are addicted to the digital forms. It's nice too. But there's something about the tangible word of God. It's a sword. It's a lamp to our feet, light to our path. First Peter. Chapter 2. No, 2 Peter, I'm sorry. 2 Peter 2. Verses 1 through 3. Now, everything that he's been teaching or setting forth in this epistle up to this point is preliminary and setting the stage for addressing the reality of false teachers coming into the church. He is preparing the people of God and encouraging them in their Christian walk and assuring them of the validity, the verity of the Word of God and that the message we have was inspired by the Spirit He is the one who moved men along as they wrote the scriptures. And well, some cases they spoke and then recorded them subsequent to their verbal expression. Listen to the word of the Lord. But there were also false prophets among the people, even as there will be false teachers among you. who will secretly bring in destructive, or it could be translated damnable, 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 covetousness they will exploit you with deceptive words. For a long time their judgment has not been idle, and their destruction does not slumber. May God bless the reading of His Word. Join me in prayer. Father, we seek illumination. We seek blessing upon the Word. As it's read, we're told that the word of God is living and powerful, that it's sharper than a two-edged sword, pierces even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit and of the joints and marrow. It's a discerner of the thoughts and intents of our hearts. Indeed, this is a powerful book. And may it so work in us as that living Word of God in all of its fullness. Blessed Spirit, do your work in our hearts. Sanctify the truth to us and sanctify us with the truth. And we'll thank you in Jesus' name. Amen. This subject that I want to address is a hard subject to handle because we like to be nice. We like to be kind. We like to be good to other people. But there is a division between truth and error. That which is clear and undeniable. We have to speak for the truth, and we have to speak against the intrusion of error. I mean, from the garden up to this point, it has been Satan's desire to deceive, to tell the followers of Jesus, the followers of Yahweh in the Old Testament, tell them lies. to speak against those who are true prophets and those who are true teachers of the Word of God. Thankfully, the Lord has not left us as orphans into this world. He's left His Spirit with us. And the Spirit works marvelously through the Word. And then, I say, seamlessly through His teachers. And that is those who are true teachers and through the Word of God. But here is where we need discernment. When we go to a physician seeking a diagnosis and he listens to our symptoms, he evaluates it and makes a decision and prescribes an order. We may not like it. We may deny it. But if he's a trained man, a wise man, he is saying the things that need to be said for our good, for our healing. It's the same with those who are teachers of the word of God. God has appointed teachers in the church. He's appointed pastors in the church, elders, to provide a teaching format for the people of God to guide them and to protect them against the intrusion of error. There was a book written some time ago by a man named Don Potrowski. And it was called Enemies with Smiling Faces. And he indicates that the world in which we live is a dangerous place. And the danger comes from those enemies that lurk everywhere in the workplace, in school, small towns, big cities, and sadly, even in the churches. Their faces are various, but they are equally tempting and deceptive. Learning to recognize these enemies with smiling faces can keep you from falling prey to their mind-bending, heart-rending lies. And so his book is a call for discernment and how to recognize those who are teaching error. And that's what Peter is doing here. They have experienced salvation by and in the knowledge of God. They are to grow, add virtue and faith and love and brotherly kindness to their faith. They are to give due diligence to make their calling and election sure. And then Peter assures them that the word of God is true. And sure, verse 19 of chapter 1, we also have the prophetic word made sure or firm, which we do well to take heed as a light that shines in a dark place. It is that torch, it is that flashlight, so to speak, that gives clarity to us and our surroundings, especially in the religious realm. especially in the Christian realm. With the advent of the Internet, I mean exponentially false teaching and false teachers and false religions and non-Christian religions have exploded on the Internet. I listen to iTunes periodically and they have a religious channel on there with a bunch of different stations on there that you can listen to. They have Bible translations on there, it seems, in every language available on the planet. Maybe not quite every language, but many, many languages. And then they have radio station after radio station that use that format to broadcast speakers, services, and that. type of thing under that religious broadcasting, but it covers a whole spectrum of Christian as well as non-Christian. Charismatics, Orthodox Christians, you name it, it's there. It's a smorgasbord of information that you can avail yourself of if it's in your language. And so it's there, and so you have to be equipped You have to put your discernment hat on immediately to filter what information you're receiving, whether it be in music or whether it be spoken. And so the Apostle Peter opens this chapter and this section diving into these characters who have infiltrated the church and describes them as what I call in my outline interlopers. Interlopers. That word interloper means an intruder, someone who introduces himself into a place where he doesn't belong. He may have all the appearances, the smile on his face, he's that smiling enemy, but you have to be serious about discerning these people. They're not all good. And he reminds his readers initially of interlopers in the Old Testament They were called false prophets among the people, and it's not just a byline that he throws out here to the people. It's based in history, and in fact, the historicity of false prophets is clear throughout the Old Testament. And there were ways that they were able to discern a true and a false prophet. But let's look at some of the, just not all of them, but at some of these, these ne'er-do-wells in the Old Testament. Open to 1 Kings chapter 13. 1 Kings chapter 13. Jeroboam is the reigning monarch, Jeroboam I. 1 Kings chapter 13, verse 1, it says, Behold, a man of God went from Judah to Bethel by the word of the Lord, and Jeroboam stood by the altar to burn incense. Then he cried out against the altar by the word of the Lord and said, O altar, altar, thus says the Lord, behold, a child Josiah by name shall be born to the house of David and on you he shall sacrifice the priests of the high places who burn incense on you, and men's bones shall be burned on you." I got a fly up here I'm having to deal with. It's a pesk. Who let him in? Is he an enemy? It looks like Satan's trying to annoy me here. Just being facetious. little bit. But here's the man of God, a true prophet of God, who speaks to Jeroboam, speaks truth to power, and addresses this subject of idolatry. And he gives this sign, verse 3, the same day saying, this is the sign which the Lord has spoken, surely the altar shall split apart, the ashes on it shall pour out. Quite a magnificent prophecy. Verse 4 tells us, So it came to pass, when King Jeroboam heard this saying of the man of God, who cried out against the altar in Bethel, that he stretched out his hand from the altar, and saying, Arrest him. Then his hand, which he stretched out toward him, withered. Just envision this. I mean, all of a sudden his hand just withers like a dry leaf quickly, instantaneously, so that he could not pull it back to himself. The altar also was split apart and ashes poured out from the altar according to the sign which the man of God had given by the word of the Lord. The king appealed to the man of God to entreat God's favor and God restored his hand instantaneously again, showing the power and veracity of this man who spoke. And so the king invites him to stay with him and to reward him. But the man of God, verse eight says, the man of God said to the king, if you were to give me half your house, I would not go in with you, nor would I eat bread, nor drink water in this place. For so it was commanded by me, by the word of the Lord saying, you shall not eat bread, nor drink water, nor return by the same way you came. And so he went out another way and did not return the way he came to Bethel. There's an old prophet, verse 11. Now, here's where we get into this whole matter of deceit and false prophecy. There's an old prophet. He dwelt in Bethel. And his sons came and told him all the works that the man of God had done that day in Bethel. So they told their father the words which he had spoken to the king. And he said, which way did he go? For his sons had seen the way the man of God went. who came from Judah. Then he said to his son, saddle my donkey. So he trails him and finds him. And he tells him in verse, this other prophet, verse 15, he said to him, come home with me and eat bread. He had specific command, go home, go home. He says, I cannot return with you. nor go with you, neither can I eat bread nor drink water with you in this place. For I have been told by the word of the Lord, you shall not eat bread or drink water there, nor return by going the way you came. Here's where the deceit comes in. I too am a prophet as you are. An angel spoke to me by the word of the Lord saying, bring him back. But notice what it says, bring him back with you to your house that he may eat bread and drink water. But he lied. He lied to him. That's the nature of a false prophet, a false teacher. They lie. They deceive. They use subterfuge. And so he accepted that. that what this prophet said countermanded what God gave him. He went back with the bread, and now it happened as they were at table, the word of the Lord came to this prophet again, who had brought him back, and he cried out to the man of God, thus says the Lord, verse 21, you have disobeyed the word of the Lord, and have not kept the commandment which the Lord your God commanded you. Deceit. And so this prophet died on his journey back. He was attacked by a lion. And this old prophet buried him and asked his sons to be buried with him when he died. But turn to another one found in 1 Kings chapter 22. This is the story of the prophet Micaiah. Jehoshaphat was king in the southern kingdom in Judah, and Ahab was the king in Israel. And he asked Jehoshaphat to enter into an alliance with him. Verse 4, 1 Kings 22, 4, and Jehoshaphat said to the king of Israel, I am as you are, my people as your people, my horses as your horses. But Jehoshaphat didn't want to proceed forward. So he says to the king of Israel, please inquire for the word of the Lord today. Then the king of Israel gathered his prophets, the prophets together, 400 men. Well, here's a majority. Here's a resounding voice, 400 men. And they say, he says, shall I go up and fight Ramoth Gilead, or shall I refrain? They said, go up, for the Lord will deliver into your hands. Jehoshaphat isn't willing to accept that. And he said, is there not still a prophet of Yahweh here that we may inquire of him? And verse 8, the king of Israel said to him, Jehoshaphat, there is still one man Micaiah the son of Imla by whom we may inquire of Yahweh but I hate him because he does not prophesy good concerning me but evil so if you don't like the messenger you put him in prison isn't that's what's happening today with voices of reason addressing the insanity of our age, people speaking out against this woke-ism today in Christendom and so on and so forth, but they won't accept it. They try to shut you down. There's one prophet, Micaiah, the son of Imla, by whom we may inquire. Verse 9, then the king of Israel called an officer and said, bring Micaiah, the son of Imlah, quickly. And the king of Israel and Jehoshaphat, the king of Judah, having put on their robes, set each one on his throne at a threshing floor at the entrance of the gate of Samaria. And all the prophets prophesied before them. Now Zedekiah, the son of Canaanah, had made horns of iron for himself. And he said, thus says the Lord with these, you shall gore these Syrians until they're destroyed. And that's their message. And so the messenger who came, verse 13, wanted Micaiah to say the same thing. Tell him to go up. join in, chime in with the 400. Verse 15 says, he came to the king and the king said to him, Micaiah, shall we go up to war against Raymond Gilead or shall we refrain? He answered him, go and prosper for the Lord will deliver it into the hand of the king. And so the king said to him, how many times shall I make you swear that you tell me nothing but the truth? And so he does. And he tells him, surely you are going to die in battle. These men were telling him that he would go out to battle, be victorious, and come back. And what happened here, Micaiah explains, verse 19, therefore hear the word of the Lord. I saw the Lord sitting on his throne and all the hosts of heaven. standing by and on his right hand and on his left. And the Lord said, who will persuade Ahab to go up, that he may fall at Ramoth-Gilead? So one spoke in this manner, another spoke in that manner. Then a spirit came forward and stood before the Lord and said, I will persuade. The Lord said to him, in what way? So he said, I will go out and be a lying spirit in the mouth of his prophets. Verse 23, now therefore look, the Lord has put a lying spirit in the mouth of these prophets of yours and the Lord has declared disaster against you. He went out to battle and he died. Verse 37, the king died according to the word of Micaiah. But that's what false prophets do, they deceive, they tell you what you want to hear. And just one last one in the book of Jeremiah, This is the history that Peter is referring to. They abounded, especially in Jeremiah's day. Chapter 28 of Jeremiah. Jeremiah had prophesied to the people and told them to submit to Babylon, and that the people who were taken into exile would be there for a long time, and they were to settle down and establish themselves. They were to plant vineyards, plant fields, and pray for the king, and live in submission to their captors. But here comes a prophet along in verse 1. It happened in the same year at the beginning of the year of King Zedekiah of Judah in the fourth year and fifth month at Hananiah. The son of Azar, the prophet who was from Gibeon, spoke to me in the house of the Lord in the presence of the priest and of all the people saying, thus speaks the Lord of hosts. the God of Israel saying, I have broken the yoke of the king of Babylon. That's not true. That's not true. You see what happened in the previous chapter, verse one of chapter 27, the beginning of the year of Jehoiakim, the son of Josiah, King of Judah, this word came to Jeremiah from the Lord saying, thus says the Lord to me, make for yourself bonds and yokes and put them on your neck. He wore those around as a visible testimony to the bondage that they'd experienced. And here comes Hananiah saying, oh, I've got another word from the Lord. And just to sum it up, He's lying to the people. He's lying to Jeremiah, verse 15, chapter 28. Then the prophet Jeremiah said to Hananiah, the prophet here now, Hananiah, the Lord hath not sent you, but you make this people trust a lie. So if we were to distill What false prophets are and what false teachers are is that they are intent upon deceiving you because they're instruments of Satan, who is the quintessential liar. My word. the literature in our Christian bookstores, the broadcasts that come across, the airwaves, whether they're podcasts. Man, it takes extra discernment to filter all of that stuff. And so you have to be grounded in the Word of God. You have to be mature in your Christian faith to be able to negotiate through all this nonsense. But that's the nature. I mean, there are other instances that I could point to in the Old Testament suffice to what we looked at. This is the historicity of false prophets. They're liars. They're deceivers. You need to double check. You need to triple check what people say. We just had a post from David cloud with Way of Life ministry and one of the posts on there was about Jesse Duplantis, who's a faith, Word of Faith preacher, prosperity preacher, and he was, you may have read it, he's contending that he has God's DNA. He has God's DNA, which means he's God, that's what he's saying. And That's the way these people are. The prosperity movement, name it and claim it. And we need this discernment here, the historicity of false prophets. And so we need to be armed against them. Jesus warned, beware of false prophets who come to you in sheep's clothing, but outwardly they are ravenous wolves. Jeremiah wrote, because from the least of them, even to the greatest of them, everyone is given to covetousness. And from the prophet, even to the priest, everyone deals falsely, falsely. We live in a world of lies from our government, but especially in the religious realm, especially with all of these writers and Jonathan Cain, I mean, his form of interpretation of Scripture, it doesn't comport with the way we normally interpret Scripture, setting up paradigms like he does. And so we have the historicity of false prophets and then the promise of false teachers. Isn't it exciting that we have to live in the midst of all this error? And there will be false teachers among you. False prophets, false teachers, pseudo teachers. This comes in all forms, all brands. in the article I wrote on the back of the bulletin, I think dovetails and correlates with what I'm writing this morning, what apostasy is. What apostasy is, what is a departure from the faith? Well, what happened in the modernist movement in the late 18th and into the 19th century, a higher German criticism arose contesting the supernatural nature of the Word of God and saying that it was only a human book, a human document. they purport to see through all of that. And sadly, through the decades, since that time, some of our best have been sent to these institutions to train under these teachers, and they've been corrupted. And my contention has always been, if you're going to go to a landfill, which that is. And you think that you can come away without smelling like the landfill. You are deceiving yourself. I remember in the time when we had a man in our church that raised feeder hogs. And I went to his operation one day, and all I had to do is just roam around outside. And I came back and my clothes smelled pig manure. And it wasn't very good. So if you're around those type of people, if you're going to center that teaching, Satan is going to use it to corrupt you. And they're here. And they continue to be in a multitude of forms. And notice the nature of how they operate. Who will secretly bring in destructive heresies. That word heresy is from a word that means a choice. It means an opinion that you choose or set forth. the setting forth of an opinion. Easton in his dictionary concludes by saying that heresy is to signify, the word heresy, a self-chosen doctrine not emanating from God. A self-chosen doctrine. They've made it up. Something novel, something new, some new twist they see on the Word of God. And so you examine it and compare it with what great and noble teachers have taught on the subject, and it doesn't comport with that. They do it surreptitiously. They do it underhandedly. They put a smile on their face. and it all seems right and all seems good, and people lap it up like a lap dog. I read on, even denying the Lord, who bought them. They deny the Lord. The word Lord here is not the word kurios, it's the word despotis, their absolute master. Now, as they were teaching, as they came into and infiltrated the assembly, they may have been saying things that sounded good to the people of God, using terminology. It's the same with Mormonism. Mormonism is a heretical group, but they use Christian terminology. But when you explore into what they mean by those terms and what the history of their movement is all about, anywhere match with scripture and you say well I know a lot of good Mormons they're noble people they're moral people and that may be true but what they believe is a damnable heresy those who embrace it are led astray same with Jehovah Witness I had an older man who was riding his bike back and forth down, and he stopped me. I was doing work out in the yard, and we got in a conversation about spiritual things, and eventually it unfolded into dealing with the truths of the Word of God. And come to find out, he had been a Methodist, and the Jehovah's Witnesses came and were friendly toward him, and lo and behold, he begins to buy into their lies. And once they've embraced it, it's very difficult for them to return out of it. And Peter says, they bring on themselves judgment, and it'll be swift judgment. And he describes it further in verse three, the latter part of it. For a long time, their judgment has not been idle. From the garden of Eden, in the day that you eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall surely die. God's judgment was not idle. He performed his judgment. He may delay judgment, but he doesn't rescind judgment. They bring on themselves destruction. What is their doctrine? There's so many varieties of false teachers out there that it takes a person who devotes himself to apologetics full time to be able to look at it all and discern it all. I look at verse 2 and the second point I want to address is the promise of defectors. The promise of defectors, verse 2, and many will follow their destructive ways. They buy into it because they don't have the apparatus, the maturity, the spiritual maturity to discern through all of that nonsense. And I've reminded you from time to time, you need to examine what I say and compare it with the Word of God. And if I'm off, I'll change. If I'm teaching error, I attempt, I put forth effort to teach truth. But there are people by the hundreds and thousands, if not millions, who follow these false teachers. And people say that Africa is the new Christian continent. That may be true in terms of Christianity. But there are those who contend that it's not all. the way it looks. Most of it is this name it and claim it prosperity type of Christianity that's pervaded much of Africa. And what he says here of those who defect, there's going to be an abundance of them, an abundance of them. They'll follow their destructive ways. their debauched lifestyle, because of whom, because of these false teachers, the way of truth will be blasphemed. The defectors themselves are going to go along with this charade and they will speak evil. Further in verse three, he says, by covetousness, and that is greed. They're going to be prime examples of the violation of the 10th commandment. By covetousness, they will exploit you with deceptive words. There's that word again, lying, deceptive, deceitful. They're under judgment. Strange things have happened all around of us because we are not true worshipers. This is what A. W. Tozer wrote. For instance, any untrained, unprepared, unspiritual, empty rattle trap of a person can start something, quote, religious and find plenty of followers who will listen and promote it. Beyond this, it may become very evident that he or she has never heard from God in the first place, because they're not true worshipers. We spend a lot of time in the churches, Tozier writes, just spinning our wheels, making noise, but not getting anywhere. I would rather worship God than do any other thing I know of in all this world. That's why we gather. This assembly is not a place that we come together to entertain. Now, there may be an entertainment as part of worship. I understand that. But the key to understanding error is to know the real. Stories told of a Chinese boy. He wanted to learn about jade, and that is the mineral, the stone jade. So he went to study with a teacher, a very talented teacher. The gentleman put a piece of the precious stone in his hand, and he told him to hold it tight. And then he began to talk. of different things, philosophy, men, women, the sun, the moon, almost everything under it. And after an hour, he took back the stone and sent the boy home. Well, this continued on for some time. The same thing, he would come back. And he'd be, why wasn't he told about the jade? Well, and one day the old man put a stone in his hand, this was after weeks, and the boy cried out instinctively after holding the real thing for all that time, this is not Jade. We have to be so familiar, so schooled in the truth that when we hear error, Immediately, our ears perk up and say, that's not right. That's not right. We're told in scripture to beware of false gods, to beware of false prophets, false Christ, beware of another Jesus, another gospel, false brethren, false teachers, false apostles, and Satan himself who deceives the whole world. We're to be on guard. We are in a warfare. We are to arm ourselves. That's why I chose some hymns that deal with spiritual warfare. God help us. God help me as your pastor to lead you in the way of truth and in the way of righteousness. Let's close in prayer. Blessed Father, we thank you this morning for the presence of the Spirit of God, who is the Teacher, and we have that anointing. Oh, our Father, as we listen to messages on YouTube, on iTunes and iHeart and different Spotify, different broadcasts. Give us a discerning mind. Help us to stand for truth against error. Oh, our Father, we thank you that you've left us the legacy of your Word that we can be guided by it, that we can read it. We thank you for those men of God who, in peril of their own lives, began to translate the Word of God into the language of the people, Luther into German, Tyndale into English and others. Wycliffe, and Coverdale, and even the King James translators, translating the Word of God into the heart language of the people. And ministries today that continue that effort. I'm reminded just recently in the recent Bible Translators Bulletin of Luxembourg, in Europe, small little country, nestled in the middle of Europe, finally have the New Testament in their own language, and what it is a blessing it is to have it in their heart language. Oh, our Father, we thank you for the Word of God. Teach us through it. Protect us with it. Help us to use it as the sword of the Spirit. In Jesus' name, amen.