Age old adage, you can put earrings on a pig, but it’s still a _____.
Peter could spot a pig a mile away (not bacon) …someone who claims to be one thing, but is in fact, a completely different thing entirely. Someone who is not genuine, someone who is a fraud.
2 Peter is one FASCINATING book.
Ben spoke the last few weeks…BTW, I understand Ben chose to make fun of me a few times. No big deal, I always take the high road. LIGHTS
2 Peter CH 1 is a great call to live a passionate, Christ centered life. It’s a great, convicting read. Then you get to CH 2…and you feel like somehow you just lost your salvation. Somehow you’re not sure of anything. It’s dark, deep, heavy and entrenched with rabbit holes that some Christians like to chase and argue their way through for miles.
……and we have 30 minutes☹
I can either talk like an auctioneer…or I can pick and chose my battles.
Very few passages in scripture speak more directly to the church. Peter explains to us that the greatest danger we face as a church is NOT from the world without…it’s ROT from within.
Have you ever grabbed a perfectly good apple, taken a big bite…only to realize that thing was nasty to the core? Soft, brown…worms. Mmmmm….Mmmmm!
It looked fine? It looked perfect even…so how did the worm get in there? Worms don’t bore their way into apples. They lay their eggs in the blossoms before the apple even begins to form. Then, when they hatch…their already in there…with all the food they can eat. When they’re done and mature, they come out. And leave the apple undesirable. Nobody is using that apple again. The worm made sure of it.
Imagine a church like that! The early church was still in bloom when Satan laid his deceptive eggs of destruction. By the time Peter wrote this letter, there were already signs of rot in these churches where false teachers, false prophets and wanna-be’s were masterfully destroying everything and taking many people down with them.
Gnostics…mixed scripture with worldly teachings and immorality.
There were false teachers in the OT, all over the NT…it was nothing new.
Simply put…amongst other things, there were just straight up, people who were professing to be Christians, who went to church, who did ‘all the right things’ …knew all the right things to do…but inside, chose to deny God. They chose the world over Jesus.
Only you know if you’re fully committed to the cause of Christ, or if just want to look like it. You can be a worm and NOT EVEN KNOW IT.
Are you a worm in the apple or a seed? Worms in the church serve themselves and devour the fruit for their own personal gain, seeds mature and bring about life for the next orchard.
There are only two options! There are only two natures found in man…one is the sin nature we are all born with, the other is the heavenly nature we receive when we accept Jesus Christ into our hearts as Lord and Savior. TD Jakes said it best…we walk around in a sinful world and when sin gets in your heart, it’s hard to tell the Christian from the worldly crowd because sin is sin, no matter which nature it invades. That’s what makes 2 Peter so important!
V 1-3 Peter warns us that there will be false teachers who rise up amongst us who rot the church from the inside out. They profess to be Christ followers but secretly deny Him…these “Christians” glory in the privileges of Christianity but ignore its moral demands. This attitude infects many people.
The motive behind these worms actions…is greed. V3
…they are mixing the culture and politically correctness with the timeless truths of scripture. They are perverting the text for their own desire. Peter warns they will pay the price.
Have you fallen into this trap? Do you pick and choose what you want to believe in the Bible? You take ALL of it or you take none of it!
Two choices.. Sinful nature or heavenly nature. Heaven or Hell. Jesus, or yourself. Jesus=heaven, yourself=hell
THIS IS NOT A SCARE TACTIC.
16 – caught drunk by neighbor...dad came to work…boxing gloves.
I never drove so slow to get home.
These are facts. You either give your life, your heart and your soul to Jesus Christ, or you don’t. Plain and simple.
So who are the false teachers Kyle??????????
They may preach religion, they may even say Christianity is an option, but they will not point to Jesus Christ as the only cure.
They come in the form of pastors and even people attending churches, cult leaders, TV hosts, celebrities,. Sometimes you can spot them a mile away, and sometimes they seek to destroy the work of God quietly, strategically from within the church itself.
They may be here, right now.
V 12 They are corrupted by their own corrupt living.
Hopefully most of us are humble enough to be saying right now…”that sounds a lot like me!”
I know what it is to wander away…to go prodigal.
I did it. I don’t know how you could shove God further away than I did.
It is one thing to wander away from God. But it is an entirely different thing to choose not to accept Him as Lord of your life, and continue to act like a Christian.
We all sin. We all fall very short of God’s radiant glory. We are dealing with sin here. Period. Let’s talk about that for a moment…
Slavery is a very bad term, there’s nothing good about it…and Peter chooses to use it.
V 19 – For whatever OVERCOMES a person, to that, they are ENSLAVED. What sins have you been overcome by lately? Where there is slavery, there is no true freedom. You are deceived when you don’t think see you’re enslaved.
Lust? Greed? Pride? Jealousy? Money? Doubt? Drugs? Alcohol? Selfishness? Hatred? These things enslave us. Slavery is not good. Jesus can break those chains. Jesus can forgive. Jesus has open arms. Jesus is waiting. When we are enslaved by sin we are most vulnerable. False teaching and wayward theology can snatch us up.
Peter uses an old Proverb here and says these false teachers are like dogs returning to their vomit, they are like pigs who choose to wallow in the mud. They may know the true way, but their nature has not changed, their behavior may have been altered but not their hearts.
As Christians, we are secure in our salvation, though we might wander off and get a little dirty. We are Gods sheep the Bible says.
And the shepherd knows His sheep. The shepherd is never far away.
If a sheep and a pig both fall into the mud, the pigs’ nature is to stay there and wallow in it. Its nature is to love it, to embrace it. The sheep’s nature is to get out….to look for the shepherd. Each sheep is different. Some sheep stay in the mud for a long time, but eventually their nature takes over…the shepherd may choose to let you stay there until you have your fill, or pull you out right away.
It’s very difficult to distinguish between the wayward Christian and the worldly sinner sometimes when both are rolling around in the mud. WE SHOULD NEVER POINT FINGERS.
We need to examine ourselves.
Do you love the pleasures of sin more than the things of God?
If so, then your nature is not like Jesus, and there’s a good chance you still have the old sin nature in your heart. I don’t know your heart, you do…so does God.
The question is not will we sin, it’s when will we sin, and what will we do with it?
If you have been refusing to let Jesus into your heart…you have a choice to make. Choose Jesus as Lord of your life, or choose yourself. You cannot save yourself.
If you are on the fence…you’re cautiously checking out Christianity…that’s great! We are so happy you have come here! Understand that Jesus knows who you are. He doesn’t care how far away you are. He doesn’t care about your inadequacies. He just wants your heart. He wants you to give your life to Him, so you can have life in the fullest. You can do that, right where you sit. Jesus is the only way to heaven…
If you are a Christian but are filthy from rolling around in the sin of this world…if you are enslaved and captivated by the allure of sin…STOP.
If you are running, STOP. If you are embarrassed…STOP. If you are broken, there is healing. If you are being swayed by the deception of worldly teachings – TURN, there is NOTHING there. You can wallow in it for years and years, what Peter is saying….is it’s been long enough.
This isn’t a terribly long message. Some of you Christians that have poured over this passage in depth might think I am missing something.
I assure you I am not.
Let me give the moral of this teaching from Peter. Plain and simple…
This is it….
Stand for Jesus…in your life…or you will fall for EVERYTHING. PERIOD. Will you stand for Jesus?
