“Daring, self-willed, they do not tremble when they revile angelic majesties, 11 whereas angels who are greater in might and power do not bring a reviling judgment against them before the Lord. 12 But these, like unreasoning animals, born as creatures of instinct to be captured and killed, reviling where they have no knowledge, will in the destruction of those creatures also be destroyed, 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; 15 forsaking the right way, they have gone astray, having followed the way of Balaam, the son of Beor, who loved the wages of unrighteousness; 16 but he received a rebuke for his own transgression, for a mute donkey, speaking with a voice of a man, restrained the madness of the prophet. 17 These are springs without water and mists driven by a storm, for whom the black darkness has been reserved. 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. 20 For if, after they have escaped the defilements of the world by the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and are overcome, the last state has become worse for them than the first. 21 For it would be better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than having known it, to turn away from the holy commandment handed on to them. 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.”
I’ve chosen a large portion to cover today. We have discussed false teachers for the last several weeks and have had much to say about them. In this final portion of chapter 2, if we back up so to speak and look at the large picture I think we can get a better idea of the strong feelings Peter had about those who mishandle the word of God and pass themselves off as spiritual leaders; indeed, since the scriptures are God-breathed, this shows us how God views these deceivers.
BRASH AND COCKY
Let’s get something said right at the outset, that I have already touched on in a previous sermon but bears repeating.
These people are not ignorant of what they are doing. They are not self-deceived and therefore to be pitied. A sincere preacher of God’s Word can be wrong. A true believer can be deceived for a time, but when someone comes along with the truth, because of the Holy Spirit in him he will recognize his error and correct it.
But these are predators, they are deliberately deceptive and they can smell simple-minded gullible people like a wolf can detect a crippled rabbit from a quarter of a mile away.
Please be assured that it was not my intention to demean the noble wolf in drawing that comparison.
Going now to these terms the Apostle uses; they are daring and self-willed.
By ‘daring’ he does not mean like the swashbuckling hero of a Robin Hood story. He means brazen, reckless, puffed up.
Notice that he uses these terms in connection with the audacious way they speak of spirits. They mock demons, claim to have authority and power over them, making a flashy demonstration of ordering them around so they can draw attention to themselves.
A biblical example of these pretenders would be the seven sons of Sceva, mentioned in Acts 19, who tried to cast a demon out of a man in their own authority.
The demon, speaking from its host, said, “Jesus I recognize, and I know about Paul, but who are you?” and proceeded to thrash them soundly.
The modern day charlatans who are claiming to cast out evil spirits in most cases are not even dealing with people who need exorcism. It’s probably the only reason they aren’t being thrashed.
When some loud-mouth with a big hairdo ‘casts out’ demons of gambling and fingernail biting it might be very entertaining for the crowd they’ve drawn, but there is nothing happening on a spiritual level whatsoever.
A woman approached a well-known preacher who had just returned from the mission field in a third world country where occult worship was wide-spread and he had seen a great deal of actual deliverances from demon possession in the power of the Holy Spirit. He had preached on that subject, telling stories of the things he had seen there. The woman proudly announced that she had recently attended another man’s ‘deliverance service’ and been delivered of a demon of overeating. The preacher smiled and said, ‘Miss, I want to warn you about something.
The first time you walk past the window of an ice cream parlor and see someone eating a hot fudge sundae, that demon is going to come right back’.
False teachers are brash and full of self and according to Peter, too foolish to tremble when they verbally accost demonic forces infinitely stronger than they.
Even angels, who are greater in might and power, leave rebuke of demons to the Lord because they know that His is the ultimate authority. Jude spoke of this:
9 “But Michael the archangel, when he disputed with the devil and argued about the body of Moses, did not dare pronounce against him a railing judgment, but said, “The Lord rebuke you!”
Now look at this amazing contrast Peter makes! They have this cocky, self-assured attitude that emboldens them to speak as though they had authority over spirits, yet he equates them with dumb animals who were put on earth to be hunted down and killed.
Peter says they speak reproachfully of things of which they are ignorant, legends in their own minds, but in reality when the earth burns up with an intense heat and the unreasoning animals of the wild burn up with it, these arrogant men will perish in the same destruction.
ADULTEROUS
In verse 14 when Peter says they have ‘eyes full of adultery’, that and the context of the previous verses indicate that he is referring to sexual immorality. But the context of the following verses (15-16) tells us that he is also talking about spiritual adultery.
Look at the middle of verse 13. “They count it a pleasure to revel in the daytime.”
When people commit lewd, evil acts they usually do them in the nighttime; in the darkness. That is because they know that those things are wrong and unacceptable and they want to hide them.
In His discourse with Nicodemus (Jn 3:19-20), Jesus said, “…this is the judgment, that the light is come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the light; for their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the light, and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed.”
Yet these men Peter is describing have become so perverted and so far removed from reality in their minds that they can’t wait until night. They are perfectly content to revel in broad daylight. They think they can’t be touched. They can do what they want with impunity. In the twisted versions of their false doctrines they have become the ones with authority to do and say what they want, and God goes along with them because in their mind they are appropriating to themselves an authority that He Himself has offered to them. He has given them a moral blank check, they suppose, and they revel without shame because they have no shame.
Further, he says they ‘entice unstable souls’, which means they drag the spiritually immature down with them by their deceitful words, enticing them to join with them in their sensuality.
Again, just think about the men of notoriety in the past couple of decades who have had large followings on television or just in large churches, who have been exposed having adulterous relations with women in their own churches.
One of them, a famous televangelist, was caught and publicly exposed, yet so imprisoned was he to his habits that short weeks later he was caught in the middle of the day picking up a prostitute and with pornographic materials in his car.
This same man, only weeks earlier, would have been literally screaming at his audience with sweat running down his face in streams, that they should renounce such lifestyles and repent and live for Jesus.
Listen. The false teachers don’t always come across as plaid-wearing clowns trying to wow you with on-stage miracles. Sometimes they just want you to think they are going to help you renovate yourself so you can be a better person. They don’t offer spiritual life; they don’t hold up Jesus as the One who gives new birth from above and makes a new creation. They want you to feel better about yourself so you will feel grateful and reward them for lifting you up.
Well, in addition to being guilty of sensual lewdness and carousing they are also spiritual adulterers.
They shun sound doctrine, even openly scoffing at those who hold to and defend sound Biblical doctrine, and put forth their own self-serving doctrines as more important because they offer immediate satisfaction and personal gratification.
Peter uses Balaam as an example of those who ‘love the wages of unrighteousness’.
What does that mean? Just what it says! They follow the path of unrighteousness for the very reason that it pays more!
Balak, king of Moab, saw the wandering Israelites as a military threat. So he hired Balaam, already known as a prophet for hire, to put a curse on them. “Have curse. Will travel”
Every time he tried to curse them though, he ended up blessing them because God was protecting His people. But that didn’t discourage the false prophet. He attempted numerous times to curse them for the sake of financial gain, until God finally spoke to him through the mouth of a donkey to get his attention. (Num 22)
This is spiritual adultery. Turning from the true God to unrighteousness.
KNOWING AND REJECTING RIGHTEOUSNESS
Let’s read verses 20 and 21 again.
“For if, after they have escaped the defilements of the world by the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and are overcome, the last state has become worse for them than the first. 21 For it would be better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than having known it, to turn away from the holy commandment handed on to them.”
Here is another point on which it is important for us to be abundantly clear. These are not Christians that Peter is talking about. They are not believers who have somehow fallen away.
They are outwardly religious. They have adopted lifestyles that let them blend in and even fool true Christians into thinking they are part of the true church.
They know how to behave and how to talk. They are involved in the functions of the church. They serve on committees, they go on mission trips, they teach classes, they preach.
But as you can see up in verse 17 they are phony. Springs without water, they disappoint. Like mists in the wind, they neither refresh nor replenish the ground.
The black darkness has been reserved for them. These are not Spirit-filled believers in Jesus Christ.
So when Peter says they have escaped the defilements of the world by the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, he can only mean that they have cleaned up their act by hearing about Jesus and adopting the churchgoer’s lifestyle. However since it is not real and the change is only on the surface and is not a spiritual rebirth, they are easily drawn back and entangled in the same sin that has always marked them.
Peter says their last state has become worse for them than the first. What he means is that before they heard about the way of salvation and were ignorant they were simply lost and dead in trespasses and sins.
But once they heard and understood on even a mental level and then deliberately rejected Christ and the way of salvation, they will be held to a greater accountability.
The writer to the Hebrews spoke of this:
“For in the case of those who have once been enlightened and have tasted of the heavenly gift and have been made partakers of the Holy Spirit, 5 and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come, 6 and then have fallen away, it is impossible to renew them again to repentance, since they again crucify to themselves the Son of God and put Him to open shame.” 6:4-6
“For if we go on sinning willfully after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, 27 but a terrifying expectation of judgment and THE FURY OF A FIRE WHICH WILL CONSUME THE ADVERSARIES. 28 Anyone who has set aside the Law of Moses dies without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. 29 How much severer punishment do you think he will deserve who has trampled under foot the Son of God, and has regarded as unclean the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has insulted the Spirit of grace?” 10:26-29
Then again, in his typical politically correct way, Peter likens those who have been given the truth and have turned from it back to unrighteousness to a dog returning to its own vomit. He’s quoting Proverbs 26:11
“Like a dog that returns to its vomit is a fool who repeats his folly.”
In the Middle East, today as well as then, dogs and pigs were looked upon with disgust.
We know of course that the Jews were forbidden to eat or even touch swine.
Very few of them, if any, had dogs as pets. Dogs were largely wild and diseased animals that ate garbage and dead animals and were ugly and dangerous.
In 1986 when President Reagan in a public address referred to Libyan Dictator Muammar Gaddafi as ‘this mad dog of the Middle East’, I can remember hearing political analysts talking to newscasters, and saying that the President couldn’t have issued a more insulting reference to someone in that culture.
Peter could not have used stronger language to describe false teachers and the vile characters that they really are, inside, under the veneer of piety and religiosity.
THE DUTY OF THE BELIEVER
Over the past weeks we have studied what this Apostle has to say about the coming of false teachers, and their brand of teaching and their deceitful practices, and their danger to the true church and the terrible end that awaits them.
We finally get to leave this dark topic and talk about the certainty of the Lord’s second coming.
As we go from here though, I think it prudent to put out a reminder of the Scriptural warnings given to everyone who names the name of Christ.
“Test yourselves to see if you are in the faith; examine yourselves! Or do you not recognize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you—unless indeed you fail the test?” 2 Cor 13:5
Do you love sound Biblical doctrine? Or do you listen to many speakers because they offer comfort and blessing but no challenge to holiness? Do you search the scriptures and test the spirits of the teachers around you to be sure they are preaching truth? Or do you ignore the Word of God and decide for yourself what you want to accept as true and what to deem to be false?
People, we have to be sure of where we stand, and we have to be oh, so careful what we accept as Biblical wisdom from those in places of spiritual authority.
I have heard very well-meaning and Godly men, who I have no doubt are born again believers in Christ and sincerely want to do His will and build His kingdom, say some off-handed and almost flippant remarks about the value of preaching and deeper teaching of God’s Word before His church.
I hear more and more expressions of belief in the need for more dialoging in Christian gatherings and less monologing, meaning they think one way communication to a congregation in teaching the Scriptures is diminishing in value for our modern, enlightened society, and that there is greater value in Christians sitting in a group and each ‘sharing’ what they like about the Bible and what they don’t.
I would implore these brothers of mine to listen to what they are saying and be very careful that they do not step over the line and be confused with these despisers of authority exposed by the Apostle Peter, who ridicule teachers of sound doctrine and with their fleshly wisdom entice unstable souls from the truth.
It is the duty of every sincere, born again believer in Christ, to diligently search the scriptures, to seek out sound Biblical teaching and submit themselves to it on a regular basis, to work to have their senses trained to discern good and evil, and not only to shun but to boldly expose doctrinal error and false teachers when they come into the fold.
“Therefore, I will always be ready to remind you of these things, even though you already know them, and have been established in the truth which is present with you. 13 I consider it right, as long as I am in this earthly dwelling, to stir you up by way of reminder,” 2 Pet 1:12-13
