Good morning, everyone. There we go. Does this have to stay here? It seems to be far away. Or can I move this? You can move it, just don't come too far forward. OK, otherwise you'll get squealed at. Not by me. Cool. All right. Good morning, everyone. Here we go. All right. We're going to, if you'd open your Bibles to 2 Peter. Surprise, surprise. 2 Peter, chapter 2, please. At my home church in Timboon, we had a really big pulpit, and so I had a lot of room, but I don't have much room up here, so I might put this over here. I've still got a Bible here, don't worry. We're going to start in chapter 1, but we're going to read from all the way through to some of chapter 2. Before we do that, I think let's pray again. So let's pray together. Father, we thank you again that we can be here today. Thank you for this day of rest, the first day of the week. Thank you that we can start the week this way, meeting together. Thank you for giving us breath in our lungs, a warm room to meet in, dry clothes to be in. Thank you for literacy, granting us the privilege of being able to read. Thank you for granting us the pleasure of reading your Word today and having this time to just pay attention to it. Father, please help each of us. Help me and the person beside me, whoever that is, help us to hear today and to receive your word. Please help me to speak. Help us all to understand it. Help us all to apply it and apply our hearts to it. We think again about all You've done for us, how You've lavished such love on us through Your Son, by bringing us into Your family. And as Your children, we look to You, Our Father, for Your guiding hand. Amen. So we're going to read, if I haven't met you, my name is Andrew, by the way. Just hello. And we're going to read from verse 19 of chapter 1. Let's read together. Oh, it's up there. That's right. Okay, verse 19. So we have the prophetic word made more sure to which you do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place until the day dawns and the morning star arises in your hearts. But know this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one's own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will. But men, moved by the Holy Spirit, spoke from God. But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will also be false teachers among you. who will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing swift destruction upon themselves. Many will follow their sensuality, and because of them the way of the truth will be maligned, and in their greed they will exploit you with false words. Their judgment 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 pits of darkness reserved for judgment, and if he did not spare the ancient world but preserved Noah, a preacher of righteousness with seven others, when he brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly, And if he condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to destruction by reducing them to ashes, having made them an example to those who would live ungodly afterwards. And if he rescued righteous lot, oppressed by the sensual conduct of unprincipled men, for by what he saw and heard that righteous man while living among them felt his righteous soul tormented day after day by their lawless deeds. then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from temptation and to keep the unrighteous under punishment for the day of judgment, and especially those who indulge the flesh in its corrupt desires and despise authority. Daring, self-willed, They do not tremble when they revile angelic majesties, whereas angels who are greater in might and power do not bring a reviling judgment against them before the Lord. And we'll stop there. Oh no, one more. But these like unreasoning animals, born as creatures of instinct to be captured and killed, reviling wherever they have no knowledge, will in the destruction of those creatures also be destroyed. I use the New King James, and the New King James writes that verse as, they speak about things that they don't understand. Note that, because we'll be referring to that. Alright, when we're reading chapter 2 there, did you notice, I don't know whether you noticed, I sort of noticed that Peter starts to get riled up here. You can sort of tell it in the way that he's writing. He starts to get riled up. And you might wonder why, or hopefully by the end of today you'll see why, if you haven't already. But he uses a lot of interesting phrases, a lot of interesting phrases about false teachers and all that. And as you read it, you might wonder, why does he spend so much time? We didn't get to the end of Chapter 2, but he goes all the way through to Chapter 2 about this. He spends 35% of the letter on this topic. We're going to be spending it today and next week in Chapter 2. But you might be wondering, why? Why doesn't he just use a few plain practical, plain English or plain Greek words? The more time I spend pondering chapter 2, the more it makes sense. So hopefully we'll see and it'll make more sense. Especially when you keep in mind chapter 1. Obviously context is really important. Chapter 1. So, just to recap, three things in chapter 1 that are really important. Verses 1-4, we saw how it's through the knowledge of God and of Jesus that we received everything we need for life and for godliness. I call it the pantry of life and godliness through the knowledge of God. And then from verse 5, we saw how we have to have healthy, fruitful, useful hearts in the knowledge of God. It's not about just intellectual knowledge. It's a heart, a healthy, fruitful heart in the knowledge. And we do that by taking that spiritual protein shake. He lists them off in verses 5 to 7. And then from verse 16, Peter's established where we go to find out about God and about Jesus. The eyewitness accounts of the apostles, who confirmed the words of the prophets to be true. That's where we go. In both cases, the prophets and apostles, they're not giving their private interpretations or personal opinions. No, it's supplied by God, it's verified by God himself. So by the end of chapter one, the image that comes to my mind, if you think of the world and all the information in the world as a kind of library, or you may not have thought about this, when I think of libraries, I think of supermarkets full of food for my mind, for our hearts, for our lives. So it's kind of a supermarket, and if you're in that supermarket, which we all are, and you're after life, you're after godliness, you're after a liberation from the corruption and pollution that riddles the world, Peter is saying, Isle Five's your isle, or whatever, Isle Five, the isle of the prophets and apostles. That's where you go. You need to know Jesus. That's where you go to know all that you need about him. That aisle, again, it's not filled with personal opinions, with private interpretations. It's not full of people who are telling you things that they don't understand. No, it's verified by God. It's supplied by God Himself. And you don't need, in verse 19, we saw how he's, I'm paraphrasing it very much, but he's saying you don't, you can't just walk up and down this aisle and stare at nutritional labels. You need to ingest it. You need to consume it. You need to apply the products in Aisle 5, what the apostles and prophets are saying, so that the day will dawn and the morning star will keep rising in your hearts. Isn't it great that we have the certainty and clarity of Isle 5? We have a place. It's confirmed. It's true. We can go there. We read just before in Jeremiah about what was happening in Jeremiah's day. It wasn't pretty. The Word would come down, the true Word of God would come down to Jeremiah, and Jeremiah would say, Thus says the Lord. In his day, the Word was, Judgment is coming, so repent. Babylon is coming. But there are other people in Jeremiah's day, such as a guy named Hananiah, who would also stand up and claim the Word of God had come down through him. And he would say, Babylon will be destroyed in two years. And all the captives that they've taken, they will come back. that created a lot of contradicting messages and people would falsely claim that God had directly talked through them and it would cause all this confusion. And what it did was it enabled God's people, many of God's people who were already inclined to rebel against God, it enabled them to pick and choose what word of God they wanted that suited them best. And the question which God kept posing to the people through Jeremiah was, which one is true? Which is the true word of God? Answer, the one that comes true, the one that proves to be true. Isn't it great? We have the prophets and apostles that have proven to be true. What the prophets foresaw about Jesus, the apostles proved, saw with their own eyes, and proved it to be true. They even heard God Himself confirm it to be true. So, we have great certainty and clarity in our day with these things. But, that's where chapter 2 starts. Peter is making it clear that we aren't out of the woods just yet. We're not out of the woods. Because when it comes to... Oh, I need to be doing this. Oh, there we go. When it comes to false prophecy and false teaching, Peter is a continuationist. He's a continuationist. Today, there are many people who falsely claim, thus says the Lord. But I think for us, it's actually a lot easier to just say, well, does he though? We have this. We go by this. Right? As though the Word of God had come down through them. It's easier for us to discard those kinds of claims, although it still happens. But Peter's warning is about false teachers who say, yes, they hold up the Bible, they say, thus says the Lord, but they twist it, they tweak it, and they teach it with false words. It says, just as there were false prophets among the people, there will be false teachers among you. Later on in chapter 3, he talks about Paul's letters and the rest of scriptures. Chapter 3, verse 16. He says, in Paul's letters, he speaks about some things that are hard to understand. I laugh a lot when Peter's commenting on how Paul's stuff is hard to understand. I get that. Paul writes things that are hard to understand, and there are untaught and unstable people who distort it and twist it, as they do the rest of Scriptures, to their own destruction. So that's what Peter is warning us about. So the danger that people faced in Jeremiah's day, it continues for us today, and it gives us great reason to be concerned. That's going to keep coming back to that. We have great reason to be concerned. So another thing I want to just go through a little bit before we get to the main points, don't worry it's not going to be too long, is to look at destructive heresies. What does he mean by destructive heresies? Because he says that these false teachers will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the master who bought them. Now, the Greek word here is arisēs. I think it was arisēs. And an element of it can be basically translated like this. A self-chosen doctrine. Self-chosen path. And an element of it is like that. So you can see the contrast there. That Peter's just said how we have the Scriptures. They're not of any private interpretation. It's from God. But there are false teachers who will bring in self-chosen teachings. Self-chosen paths that actually lead to destruction. When you heard, or maybe when you heard destructive heresies first, you might mainly have thought of present-day false teachers, like a Benny Hinn or a Joel Osteen or someone like that. Or you might think about early church times, where there's all these debates over the isms, like the divine nature, the true, the human nature of Jesus, the triune God, all those isms, modalism, Arianism, you might have thought about that. Or you might have thought about Reformation era, Catholic, doctrines like purgatory and selling of indulgences and things like that. All those things are covered under the scope of destructive heresies, but the risk is that we think, okay, I know what these are and it's good. I'm not under any danger of them. But when you take all of chapter 2 into account, this is how I think Peter would explain, in simple words, how he would explain destructive heresies. Something that leads me to misplace my faith and hope. Something that will land you on a path other than Christ. The true Christ. Something that will lead you to misplace your faith and hope. Something that will land you on a path other than Christ. See it's not all, it is but not all about a bunch of theologians and scholars debating in a small room about things that I frankly sometimes struggle to get my head around. Those are key battles, but the ultimate war aim here, the ultimate battle for the larger battlefield, is all about the day dawning in our hearts. It's all about Christ the Morning Star rising in our hearts. For that to happen, we need the truth about God and about Jesus. We need to be listening to the scriptures without twisting it, without self getting in the way. We need to be opening it and reading it as it is. The battlefield is not just about an intellectual truth, although it is, it's not just. It's about getting the right fuel for our hearts. You don't put water or diesel, even unintentionally, in an unleaded car. You don't put two-stroke oil in a four-stroke engine. I don't. No, you don't. Yeah. And we mustn't feed our hearts with self-preferred, scripture-modifying, subtly false truths about Jesus and about the way of salvation. Now, after I read the three first verses of chapter 2, the phrase that comes to my mind is, danger close. Danger close. There's a mountain of pending danger that's looming here that should make us very concerned. Notice the word he repeats in those three verses. They will secretly introduce destructive heresies. They'll bring swift destruction upon themselves. Their destruction is not asleep. There'll be false teachers among you. He's not trying to make us suspicious of each other. He's not trying to make us quick to deny each other as heretics if we disagree. That's not what it's about. He's highlighting the seriousness of it all, and He's trying to stir up in us a deep concern. And from these three verses, I can see five reasons that we have cause for great concern. Firstly, the reason, there's a reason here, is secret. They will secretly introduce destructive heresies. So these false teachers, they secretly do it. So no one, I mean, I don't know if you know anyone who does this, I don't know, and I haven't heard of anyone who publicly says, stands up and says, okay, I'm going to teach you a destructive heresy for you to follow. No one says that. No one even says, I'm currently being led astray by a destructive heresy. Obviously, no one does that. I hear people who say, I used to be, but then they say, no one ever says, I presently am. Because it's subtle, it's in secret. Have you noticed how sometimes, maybe especially in a church like this, in Reformed churches, I'm sure there are others as well, but we might often feel like, it's no secret to me. I can see it coming from a mile away. We're Protestant. We're a Reformed tradition. We're all about Scriptures. I can see it coming from a mile away. I'm not at risk. But that's not what Peter is teaching. That's only about false teaching that someone else has done a lot of hard work at exposing. That doesn't mean the risk for us is less. It's done in secret. It's probably even secret to the false teachers themselves. In verse 13, he says how they revel in their own deceptions. Jeremiah mentioned it as well. So think of it like this. Think of it like food poisoning. Food poisoning. Has anyone here ever suffered from food poisoning? Rowan has. Yeah, a few. It's not fun, is it? You didn't do it because you knew the food was poisoned. Bacteria works in secret, doesn't it? It does. And you wouldn't consume the food, but you know about it when you wake up through the night and your guts feel like they're about to explode. That's why the food industry has vigorous testing regulations. They try to expose it before it causes that harm. That's the mentality that we need. When food has been shown to be contaminated and poisonous, well then everyone knows, don't touch it. Peter is warning us about the food that is being offered to us that is not obviously contaminated. This secrecy is cause for great concern. Another reason we have cause for great concern, because these are destructive heresies. They lead to destruction. Peter repeats that word three times in just two sentences for emphasis. You don't want to be playing hot potato with a stick of dynamite, do you? No one would. You don't want to even be near someone who's playing hot potato with a stick of dynamite. But compared to this, that's trivial. Peter's talking about hell and destruction here. And that level of danger dictates that no matter how certain or clear you think you can see, no matter how doctrinally accurate and correct you think you are, We must never, through overconfidence, feel invincible or immune to these things, or immune to harboring these destructive heresies in our hearts, even though we intellectually know about them. There's too much at stake to be led astray. A few weeks ago, that's one of the reasons why we were going on about, I need regular reminder of the truth. And they need regular reminder of the truth, because so much is at stake. Thirdly, cause for great concern to make the odds even worse. Peter explains there are many who will follow these destructive ways, this sensuality. We often make the mistake, even in other parts of Scripture, of just, you know, the many, them, excluding ourselves naturally from the many. But Peter doesn't do that. He doesn't just, you know, exclude some. Are you seeing that there's great cause for concern? Fourthly, the way of truth will be maligned. The path that I'm seeking to walk and the path that you're seeking to walk on will be maligned, denounced, slandered. It's a hard path. And being a hard path, we will naturally want to avoid it. No one wants to walk down the hard path. If an easier path is offered, and we can't see anything wrong with it at the time, we would be inclined to take it. Cause for great concern. Fifthly, I said there are five reasons that we have cause for great concern. This is a big one. Exploited. We are prone to being exploited by them. That's in verse 3. Now when I read it in verse 3, I read it like Peter is directly writing to me. I personalized it. And perhaps you can too, or some of us, or those of us who are Andrew here can already personalize it when I read it out. Andrew, they will exploit you with false words. Now, I have no reason to think that, ah, naturally I'm excluded from this. No. But you can also read it like this. Andrew, they will exploit your Christian brothers and sisters with false words and lead them astray. Now, when you sit and think about that, that is concerning. Do you believe this? It's concerning. I don't want to be exploited and led astray. I don't want my brother and sister to be exploited and led astray. But I know that I have a struggle with the flesh, that even with just a little folding of the hands, a little closing of the eyes, a little compromising on scriptural exegesis, I am ripe prey for that. I mentioned at the start how Peter is getting riled up, right? I read it and think, oh, Peter's getting riled up. Why is he getting riled up? And I think it's called for. Because, in fact, when I think about how he spends so much of the chapter going on about this, because it makes sense. It's that dangerous. It really is. He's going to great efforts to really warn us and loudly warn us of these risks. How vulnerable we are. He's like a parent who sees how vulnerable his children are to being exposed and exploited. Remember, he knows his time on earth is just about to end when he writes this letter. And he's looking ahead and seeing the sheep are so vulnerable to this. He's hammering it home. Now, has anyone here seen the movie Chitty Chitty Bang Bang? Yes, a few of us. Yes, I watched it when I was a kid. It's an old film and it's a fairy tale film. Dick Van Dyke's in it and some others. And this family ends up in a fairy tale kingdom where the king Wants to capture all the children and put them in prison. He locked them up So the king sends out this special agent to capture the children He goes out and he sings all these nice songs about ice cream and candy this is the guy he's kind of obvious to us, but He said, ice cream, candy, and all the kids who are hiding in the basement hear those songs, and they're enticed. Ice cream, candy, and they come running out, and they enter his wagon of lollies and all these goodies and everything, and then he pulls the cord, and all the decorations fall off, and all the lolly signs, they're gone, and it's revealed to be a prison wagon, and they're locked up in this prison wagon. I think Peter here is kind of like a parent saying, don't, look out for this, do look out for this, don't go there. He sees how vulnerable we are to being exploited by strangers, by false teachers who will trick and twist us, the word, into misplacing our faith and hope. Peter sees the cliffs that are right beside, that are not very far from the path of Christ, and he's pleading loudly for us to beware. This is something that Jesus also expresses in Matthew 24. He says how false Christs and false prophets will come and try to deceive even the elect, if that were possible. Are you concerned? Is this something that you are very aware of and cautious about? You ought to be. Peter was. Jesus was. Why should we not be? See, this kind of concern, it's not a faithless concern. It's not a sign of someone being, you know, pretty light on the faith and worried about all these bad boogeymans. No, it's a concern that springs from genuine faith. from believing what God is telling us in His Scriptures through Peter. So the question is, how do we respond? How do we respond to this concern? And it's in the text for us. There are three things I draw your attention to. Firstly, at the end of chapter 3, this is something that Peter goes on about. Remember that their destruction is real. And it is not idle. It hasn't been idle. The gun has gone off a few times already. So if our cry is, Lord, how long will they malign your way? How long will they exploit your people? How long will they exploit my family members? How long must I walk this dangerous road close to these cliffs? Answer, they're already condemned. Their end is imminent. The gun has already been fired a few times. The angels who sinned, they were cast down to destruction. The flood was brought upon the ungodly, and Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed. None of them escaped. There is hope for us because their end is imminent. But the thing is, this is a kind of a danger-close situation, right? That destruction isn't far away and distant. God knows if I have harboured destructive heresies in my own heart. I don't want to be caught up in that destruction. I don't want to be caught up with that stick of dynamite near me going off. What do you do? Do you run? Where do you look? Do you just brace for impact? Do you just cross your fingers and hope that you haven't misplaced your faith and hope? Do you just hope that you aren't caught up in this swift destruction? No, I hope not. I hope you don't. What do we do? Our God is not indifferent to this. Our God is not distant from us. Our God is the true and living God. The God who loves us and sent his beloved Son to teach us, to guide us, and to lead us in the way of truth. We're not on our own. He has not left us. Jesus even sent His Spirit to guide us, to know His voice. So, hope in God. It's implicitly implied here. Hope in God. God knows how to deliver the godly and to reserve the ungodly for judgment. God saved Noah. God saved Lot out of the midst of Sodom and Gomorrah when it was destroyed. So how do I respond? Well, God is not distant. God is not indifferent. The deceit of false teachers is not out of my God's control. I, we are to humbly and unceasingly and diligently ask the Lord to deliver us and guide us, deliver us from temptation and trials, the trials of false teaching, and to lead us in the way of truth. He's given us what we need and His Spirit, and we need to be very diligent in seeking it and understanding it. Notice also, he doesn't say, the Lord will deliver you. He says, the Lord knows how to deliver you. It's interesting that he says that, the Lord knows how to deliver you. I think Peter knows how the Lord does it as well. In fact, he's already told us how the Lord delivers us from being led astray. It was in chapter 1, by giving all diligence to that spiritual protein shake. giving all diligence to, in our faith, supply moral excellence, to moral excellence, to knowledge, self-control, to self-control, perseverance, to perseverance, godliness, to godliness, brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness, love. Give all diligence. If these things are yours, you will not be fruitless and useless, but fruitful and useful in the knowledge of Christ. That's Noah's testimony. When the Word of God came to him, he diligently listened to it and applied it. He didn't think, oh, what do I think about this? Or anything like that. He took it as it was and responded. When Lot heard it, when the angels came to Lot in Sodom and Gomorrah, he listened to it. And he barely escaped. His wife didn't make it. She looked back. And that's how God delivers us. diligent listening, diligently reminding each other, not ever just giving up or bracing for impact, but diligence. We can't afford to be lazy or just slightly negligent. We can't risk assuming that since we adhere to a good doctrinal confession, well, that makes us, you know, keeps us from being led astray. It helps, but it doesn't keep It doesn't guarantee us. We can't afford to assume that by coming to this church, simply by coming to this church, our hearts are somehow immune from harboring destructive heresies. We can't afford to assume that since we hold to sola scriptura, we are immune from the dangers out there that, or that since we often point, you know, we have those exposed false teachings that we always point to that somehow we're not at risk of the subtle and secret false teaching that we're not aware of? Peter is concerned. Jesus is concerned. You and I need to be concerned, not just for ourselves, but for those around us. And we must give our utmost to cultivate healthy, useful, fruitful hearts that are fruitful in the knowledge of Christ, so that the day will keep dawning and Christ the morning star will keep rising in our hearts. That is the Lord. That is how the Lord delivers us. Physically, you're in the right place. Meeting with God's people, reading, learning from His Word. Is your heart in the right place? Is your mind in the right place as you sit here, as you gather through the week, as you get up in the morning? I pray that that's the case.