“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. 2 Many will follow their sensuality, and because of them the way of the truth will be maligned; 3 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.”
This is one of those places in our Bibles where a chapter division can be distracting. Peter has been preparing his readers with words of encouragement in regard to their eternal security and words of instruction in reference to the application by faith of Godly behavior in their living, and then given assurances that in the Scriptures they have the most solid of foundations, in that no prophecy of Scripture was out of the imaginations of men but that those prophets of old wrote and spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit.
Indeed, we have the confirmation of Scripture itself that they often had little or no idea what they were writing about, but as vessels yielded to God they faithfully documented His words both for their own generation and the generations to come.
Peter himself spoke of this in his first letter:
“As to this salvation, the prophets who prophesied of the grace that would come to you made careful searches and inquiries, 11 seeking to know what person or time the Spirit of Christ within them was indicating as He predicted the sufferings of Christ and the glories to follow. 12 It was revealed to them that they were not serving themselves, but you, in these things which now have been announced to you through those who preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven—things into which angels long to look.”
In past wars couriers were commonly used to carry communications back and forth from headquarters to the front lines. A military courier bringing a detachment to the field of battle from headquarters may have absolutely no idea what is contained in the sealed envelope he carries.
It is his duty to carry it safely and intact to the commander in the field only. When the commander takes it from the courier’s hand, if the seal has been broken he must then be suspicious, not only of the courier, but of the information in the envelope. If it has been opened prior to reaching him he cannot be confident that the information has not been altered.
However, if the seal is intact, so is the integrity of the courier, and the commander can trust that he is receiving information and instruction as though directly from the hand of his superior officer.
We can receive as a word of encouragement and added confirmation of the validity of scripture, the revelation that men of old often did not understand themselves that which they were relaying from Headquarters.
Because liars, deceivers, con artists, false prophets will always claim an inside track. They will never so much as hint that they may be less than fully informed. They want your absolute faith, so they must sound absolutely confident.
Therefore, ignoring the chapter division for a moment, let us notice that Peter draws this distinction in his narrative.
Men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God, but false prophets also arose among the people, and they were destructive, disobedient, and damned. The outline was right there in the text, so we’ll draw from that.
DESTRUCTIVE
Let’s be very clear on this point. False teachers are deliberate in what they do. They are not false teachers by accident. A teacher can be wrong. A teacher can be deceived. But a false teacher isn’t just teaching what is false; he is false. His goal is to destroy with his words and his tactics. He is a servant of the enemy and there is nothing ignorant or accidental about what he is doing.
Heretical
The first thing we see in our text is that the False teacher is heretical. He introduces heresies. Vine’s dictionary of New Testament words says the term denotes “an opinion, especially a self-willed opinion, which is substituted for submission to the power of truth, and leads to division and the formation of sects.”
That’s why Peter calls them ‘destructive heresies’. The false teacher’s aim is to destroy unity in the body, destroy the church’s effectiveness, destroy Godly relationships, destroy the purity of the Gospel message itself.
Now that does not necessarily mean he will sound heretical on the surface.
He will sound very convincing and he certainly will employ the familiar terms of the church. He’ll talk about God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit; he’ll talk about fellowship and giving and miracles and prayer and so on.
Wiersbe, in his commentary on these verses said:
“The false teachers use our vocabulary, but they do not use our dictionary. They talk about “salvation,” “inspiration,” and the great words of the Christian faith, but they do not mean what we mean. Immature and untaught believers hear these preachers or read their books and think that these men are sound in the faith, but they are not.”
Satan only has to put a drop of poison in the stew to ruin the whole batch. He’s not going to pour in enough to alert you by a bad taste or smell.
It isn’t stupid people who are snared by the false teachers. It is spiritually immature people, ignorant of the Word, people who through slothfulness and spiritual neglect do not have their senses trained to discern good and evil. Heb 5:14
Sensual
Another element of their destructiveness is their sensuality. Now when I was first coming to the passage for study I was prepared to interpret that as meaning they were most concerned with their fleshly desires in general.
But as it turns out the word used there in verse 2 is a reference to habitual, unrestrained, sexual lewdness and debauchery. My first reaction to the realization of this was to think, ‘certainly all false prophets are not marked by these tendencies; this behavior’. Further study revealed however that according to several passages in 2 Peter and some parallel verses in Jude, sensuality is a distinguishing mark of false teachers. Let’s look.
Jude 4 & 7
4 For certain persons have crept in unnoticed, those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation, ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.
7 just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities around them, since they in the same way as these indulged in gross immorality and went after strange flesh, are exhibited as an example in undergoing the punishment of eternal fire.”
2 Peter 2:7, 10, 13-14, 18-19, 22
7 and if He rescued righteous Lot, oppressed by the sensual conduct of unprincipled men
10 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,
13 suffering wrong as the wages of doing wrong. They count it a pleasure to revel in the daytime. They are stains and blemishes, reveling in their deceptions, as they carouse with you, 14 having eyes full of adultery that never cease from sin, enticing unstable souls, having a heart trained in greed, accursed children;
18 For speaking out arrogant words of vanity they entice by fleshly desires, by sensuality, those who barely escape from the ones who live in error, 19 promising them freedom while they themselves are slaves of corruption; for by what a man is overcome, by this he is enslaved.
22 It has happened to them according to the true proverb, “A DOG RETURNS TO ITS OWN VOMIT,” and, “A sow, after washing, returns to wallowing in the mire.”
That’s pretty compelling. Now here’s the red flag, Christians:
“And many will follow their sensuality, and because of them the way of the truth will be maligned”
This is what is so destructive about this characteristic of false teachers. Of course families get ruined. Of course ministries are destroyed. But what false teachers leave in the wake of their sexual exploits, when they are exposed, is a black mark on the message of the gospel.
What happens when the Bakkers and the Swaggarts and the Haggards and the Jacksons get busted? First of all, they don’t go down alone! The bigger they are the more they take down with them. Secondly, they bring ridicule down on the church and worse, on the name of Christ.
Greedy
In addition to all, they are greedy. They are out for personal gratification and personal gain, and they use their lies to get it.
Peter says they exploit you with false words, and that word ‘false’ is plastos, from which we get the English, ‘plastic’. Here is MacArthur’s take on it:
“In keeping with its etymological roots, plastic originally had the connotation of something not completely authentic. After all, plastic items often look as if they are manufactured from another substance, such as wood, metal, china, and so forth. Thus plastic at first glance ‘deceives’ consumers. In a similar way, false teachers deal in phony doctrine. Their theology is not really based on biblical truth, but only molded by false reasoning to appear genuine.” The MacArthur New Testament Commentary – 2 Peter & Jude , -MacArthur, Moody Pub, 2005
As I read those comments by Dr. MacArthur I was reminded that when I was a boy and more and more merchandize was being sold that was made of plastic, the common reaction I would see from the adults around me was, “Why, that’s not real, it’s just plastic!” Now, when there is an exclamation of surprise it’s more likely to be, “Hey! That’s not plastic; it’s made of the real stuff!” Not that there is much left to say that about…
Be on guard, Christians. Guard your ears, guard your mind, guard your heart. False prophets destroy with their deceit, with their lust, with their greed. If they only destroyed themselves it wouldn’t be a big problem. They don’t. They bring well-meaning believers and active, kingdom- focused churches down with them.
DISOBEDIENT
The next thing we see in our text about False teachers is that they are disobedient. That too is manifest in several ways.
Sneaky
They are sneaky. Peter says they ‘secretly’ introduce destructive heresies. See why I began by saying they were deliberate and that false teachers were not that way by accident? People don’t do things secretly by accident. Secrets have to be planned and thought through in advance or they don’t stay secret.
False teachers pretend to be what they are not. Remember what we read in Jude 4? They creep in unnoticed. One of the best illustrations I’ve heard of this actually came from a man who was later brought to light as a wolf in sheep’s clothing himself.
I once heard him illustrate Satan’s gradual deceptions as the slight turning of a mirror. He said Satan introduces falsehood and heresy like someone turning a mirror ever so slightly that when you come back to it each day you don’t notice that anything is different, but over time it becomes so refocused that you are no longer seeing in it the same things you were seeing the first time you looked.
Jim Jones and Vernon Howell were examples of this tactic of false teachers. People who knew them testified later that early in their ministries they seemed to be teaching all the right stuff.
The change in them and in their messages was indiscernible on a day to day basis, but in one case the deceiver finally had his whole congregation deliberately drinking poison and laying face down in the grass to die; in the other he had them shooting at ATF and FBI agents and finally torching their own fortress, choosing to roast rather than desert their human master.
The false teacher is sneaky and manipulative.
Rebellious
False teachers are rebellious. When Peter here says “denying the Master who bought them”, he doesn’t mean they deny the existence of Christ or deny His atonement. He means they deny Him in the sense of refusing to obey Him.
Now let’s be clear on another point. In saying ‘who bought them’, Peter doesn’t mean they were actually saved. He means that just as a slave owner has authority over the slave he has purchased, Christ paid the full price for sin and has the right to expect belief and obedience. Those who reject the gospel rebel against that offer of redemption and refuse to accept His lordship.
The false teacher, just like all who have not believed in Christ for salvation, is in the group Paul talked about when he said to the Ephesians,
“Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.” Eph 2:3
Christ bore the guilt and penalty for all sin in His body on the cross where it was judged under the righteous wrath of God. But no individual’s sins are paid for until that individual, hearing the gospel, drawn and regenerated by the Holy Spirit, comes in repentance and the obedience of faith and appropriates to his life that atonement.
Those who enter into eternity having rejected Christ as their Lord and refusing to obey the gospel, go there paying the wages of sin, which is eternal separation from God. This is as true of any sinner as it is of the false teacher.
DAMNED
Well the false teacher is destructive, disobedient and damned. That last word, used commonly in the King James version, is translated in newer versions ‘condemned’ or ‘condemnation’. But I had to have a third ‘D’.
My usage of it is valid though. It is a term used of one brought before a court, found guilty of wrong and sentenced. Condemned.
Paul used it in Romans 3:8 of those who were spreading lies about him and his message in order to hurt him and malign the gospel. They were false teachers. He said “…their condemnation is just’.
Jude uses this same word in verse 4, which we have looked at twice already.
Judged in advance.
4 For certain persons have crept in unnoticed, those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation, ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.”
In verse 3 of our text Peter says of them that “…their judgment from long ago is not idle”.
Listen. God is jealous for the purity of His Word. He is truth. He cannot lie. Therefore His Word is truth. Jesus made this claim in His High Priestly prayer recorded in John 17:17 as He prayed for His disciples.
“Sanctify them in the truth; Your word is truth”.
James issued a warning in chapter 3 of his epistle that ought to hang over the door of every homiletics class in every bible college and seminary in the world:
“Let not many of you become teachers, my brethren, knowing that as such we will incur a stricter judgment.” James 3:1
Men aspiring to the ministry should understand from the outset that they are handling the very Word of God in their study and in the pulpit, and they will be held accountable for the way they present it to people.
I cringe inside every time I hear someone yank one of their favorite verses out of context and use it as a spring board for their favorite soap box, misusing it, misapplying it, then just leaving it on the floor bleeding while they go off on the same tirade they finally get around to every time they open their mouth.
Sound Biblical doctrine is a pure and precious thing that ought to be handled lovingly and with utmost care so that it is presented in a way that diminishes the speaker and glorifies the God of the Word.
Every time the Scriptures are opened to be publicly read and expounded, enough prayer and careful meditation ought to have been done so that the Holy Spirit can take and apply His truth to the spirit of every sincere listener in the room.
You only need go to the Old Testament prophets and read through them to see over and over again how God feels about His Word and those who go out claiming to speak for Him.
RESISTANCE IS FUTILE
This is why Peter says “…their judgment from long ago is not idle and their destruction is not asleep.
In verse one he said by that their destructiveness and disobedience they bring swift destruction down on themselves. That means that it will come suddenly and there will be no escape from it.
Remember, they do what they do deliberately and with design. They creep into the midst of the assembly, bringing in heresies that destroy, that hamper the gospel message and hinder the work of the Kingdom, that bring about ridicule and disgust from those outside the faith who think that these false teachers are a legitimate representation of Christ and His ministers.
It is why Paul declared that the condemnation of them is just and both Peter and Jude express no pity for them in their prediction of swift and final doom.
Christians, the Holy Spirit inspired Peter in this letter to expose false teachers, of whom there were many and who have been always present, and who are abundant in the church and in every form of public media today.
He is going on next to cite several examples of the sort of destruction that is to come on them, and we will get a fuller and clearer picture of how God views the misuse and misapplication of His Holy Word for personal profit and position.
Let’s just pause here and pick up, Lord willing, in another sermon, with the assurance that God is able to protect and preserve His Word. In their willful self-deception false teachers deceive the ignorant, lead the weak astray, take advantage of the immature who feed their greed. But it is they who slumber in their sin and think they are in control. God’s judgment express is comin’ down the line and there they lay, sleeping peacefully, across the tracks.
God’s Word is truth. God’s Word abides forever. God’s Word will not return to Him empty, without accomplishing what He desires, without succeeding in the matter for which He sent it. Isa 55:11
