Sunday, February 16
2025-02-16
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uE1PEdiryMo

Our Scripture reading this morning is from 2nd Peter, chapter 2, beginning in verse 1. We're going to read through verse 1 through 3. If you have been with us as we have moved through the letter of 2nd Peter, this verse is going to be kind of like a splash of cold water in the face, because so far, Peter has moved through this first chapter, reminding us that we have a precious faith like that of the apostles. He has reminded us of the work of Christ in His calling, His transformation, equipping the saints and giving them encouragement. He's both called us to this grace-fueled growth, encouraged us in that walk, sought to bring us assurance, has talked to us about the importance of His words as He faces death Himself. And then He has talked about the surety of the faith, things that Peter has seen and heard. And most importantly, beyond his eyewitness testimony, is this prophetic word, he says, more fully confirmed.

And now this book takes a turn, because Peter, after establishing a foundation, then begins to warn about dangers in the church. So I'll begin with our Scripture reading this morning. But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the master who bought them, bringing upon themselves swift destruction. And many will follow their sensuality, and because of them, the way of truth will be blasphemed. And in their greed, they will exploit you with false words. Their condemnation from long ago is not idle, and their destruction is not asleep. This is the word of the Lord. And so as we come to this section in 2 Peter, Peter is pointing to us that there is a storm for God's people that is coming. We were reflecting, I was reflecting, and then I confirmed the dates

and the times with Rachel. But it has been about five years since the wind came, and we lost our very first trampoline over the neighbor's fence. And there I am at 6 o'clock in the morning trying to get it back over the fence before the neighbors notice that our trampoline has soared like a kite into their yard and onto their fence. And here I am, and you're like, "Brandon, why didn't you anchor the trampoline?" Well, I absolutely did anchor it, but not well. Like, I had these big chunks of wood that somebody brought us to burn in our fire pit. And so we had anchored the legs of the trampoline with, at that point, probably about a hundred pound logs that were sitting there. But what happens over a period of years is, if you don't know, wood dries out.

And as it dries out, it gets lighter. And as those logs got lighter, and as the wind blew, it kind of began to rock back and forth and began to wiggle out from under the weight of the logs. And so because of the little bit of shifting and the reduced weight, all of a sudden, our trampoline sort of snapped in half and sailed into the neighbor's yard. And as we come to this text in 2 Peter, Peter sees a similar storm coming for the church. And so what we did is we learned our lesson. With the next trampoline, about five years ago, we took and we anchored posts in, all around the legs. And then we attach those posts to the legs of the trampoline. And periodically, we go out and we check where we attach and replace pieces as necessary and check for where,

because I'm not going back over that fence while it's still dark to try to retrieve a trampoline before the neighbors notice. I don't want to do that again. And what Peter is doing so far is he has sought to remind us that we are anchored in Christ. That he is our hope, and that he is our rock, he is our strength, and he is our future. And this foundation that we have in Christ is not just a wonderful idea, but Peter has made sure that we understand that it is true. He says, "I've seen it, I've heard it, and it is more fully confirmed in the Word of God." And so as he writes, and as he moves into chapter 2 and chapter 3, he is going to deal with the storm that is coming from the church.

And the storm that he sees coming, and we just read these words, is this: "That false prophets also arose among the people." He is speaking of the past, specifically of Israel's history. And then, here is the storm that is coming. "Just as there will be false teachers among you who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the master that brought them, bringing upon themselves swift destruction." And so, Peter's purpose in all of this, and in this warning that he is beginning, that will run through all of chapter 2, and then the warning will shift to how we think about the return of Jesus in chapter 3. What he is seeking to do is walk around us and check and make sure that we are anchored to the foundation, to be aware of those that would seek to shift us, or turn us, or move us away from Jesus.

Right? Peter's purpose in all of this writing is to make sure that the church is securely anchored to the rock that is in Christ. In fact, as we said several weeks ago, he says, "I intend to remind you of these qualities, though I know you're established in the truth." "I'm going to go back and remind you, and then I'm going to stir you up." And then he goes on to talk about how he's going to die, but he's going to leave a letter. So even after he's dead, he can continue to ensure the foundation does not move. It is very easy for us, I think at times, to dismiss things that we think are unlikely or don't apply to us. And so just about every weather forecast -- and I've been wrong a couple times this year, but I've also been right a couple times this year --

so I'm basically as qualified as any other weatherman who makes predictions, right? You just kind of flip a coin and guess. We look at the weather forecast, and it says, "Oh, you're going to get 45 inches of snow." And you look at where the moisture's coming, and you look at the fact that it's 70 degrees outside, and you go, "I think that that seems unlikely. I don't need to run to the store for bread and milk so I can have milk sandwiches during the middle of this storm." And so maybe we don't do anything about it, because it seems -- the forecast may seem unlikely. But then there are other times we don't think warnings apply to us. So about a year ago, we got a very serious -- from our water company here at the church.

And it had to do with backflow valves and inspections, and there was mention of fines, and there was like Virginia State Code in bold. And there's a bunch of words in italics. And you read through this very serious letter, and it's a little taken back. The language is formal, there's legalese, there's a form to fill out. But as I was reading it, I'm like, "Hey, I don't think this applies to us." So I called them, and I said, "It doesn't apply to you. We just sent it to everybody who is a commercial account." And so this year we got another very serious letter. And I looked at it, sent an email to the guy, I said, "Hey, this isn't for us." He says, "Yeah, I know, you're on the list." And just ignored it. And there are times when we come to warnings in Scripture, especially warnings that are sort of a theological nature, like Peter is warning us of.

And we might say, "Yeah, that really isn't going to affect me at all, like the storm that may never come." Or we might say, "Right, not only is it unlikely, but maybe it just doesn't apply. I'm not part of that situation." And when we come to verses like that, in fact, this entire chapter, it can be very easy for us to dismiss Peter's warning as either unlikely or non-applicable. That would never affect me. Not going to happen to me. These religious controversies are for theologians or for pastors or for people who spend their lives studying the Bible. Or maybe our objection to Peter's warning is this, "I'm just a normal Christian. I don't have to deal with these kind of things." And so I would remind you for a moment of who Peter is writing to. As Peter writes this letter,

he is not writing it just to people who are in seminary or people who are deep Bible scholars. He's writing it to a church that is filled with ordinary people. And the intention of these letters is to be read in the church to the ordinary people serving Christ. Peter's warning is very clearly for all Christians. But it's interesting throughout Scripture, it's not the only place we see God's people warned. And the warning is always so very serious. Paul will say this to the Corinthians, "I'm afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ." It's a similar thing to what Peter is saying about the false teacher. But there's more, because sometimes in our pride, we might say, "This will never ever happen to me.

I don't need to think about to address or deal with this threat of false teachers." That's not a big deal for me. I know the Bible. Maybe like Timothy, you've been instructed in the Holy Scriptures since childhood. And you go, "It doesn't apply to me." Let me tell you about a guy by the name of Barnabas. And I love Barnabas. His name just means "Son of Encouragement." In fact, Barnabas isn't even his real name, right? It's a nickname given to him by the apostles, because he's such an encouraging guy. And when the church is struggling in the beginning of Acts, and all these people who were supposed to have gone home, but stayed in Jerusalem, became Christians, and now they're staying and learning in Jerusalem, and they don't have jobs and they need food and places to stay,

Barnabas goes and sells his land and brings the money to the apostles, encouraging the church. But also, when a persecutor of the church becomes a Christian and nobody wants to talk to him, Barnabas, being sent out by the apostles, goes and gets this guy, Paul, drags him with him on this mission, and in many ways is the one who, through the providence of God, brings Paul into this place of serving the church. And he doesn't just do it with Paul, but here's the interesting thing. The guy who reached out, who encouraged people in Galatians 2, Paul writes this, and the rest of the Jews acted hypocritically along with him so that even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy. The guy who is constantly reaching out, all of a sudden refuses to talk to certain people or spend time or eat with certain people in the church.

And what we see is that in the rest of the New Testament, and we could go to so many other places, but there is a warning, and it's for us, and it's not a warning that we can outgrow or move past because of our education or experience. The other thing that often happens is we don't see the warning as very serious because it's a spiritual warning. We take physical warnings sometimes very seriously. One of the things that I love in terms of fruit is I love grapefruit. In part, because when I would stay with my grandpa when I was very young, we'd wake up and it would be black coffee and a half of grapefruit. It didn't matter if you're six years old. You're getting black coffee and a half of a grapefruit. It turns out I love grapefruit. Like, I don't want your ruby red grapefruit. Just give me like the white one that just makes your face just...

And all different shapes. One of my favorite things is our friends growing up in Arizona, they have a giant grapefruit tree in their backyard. When we lived in Vermont, they would send us in the middle of the winter a whole case of grapefruit, not from an orchard, but picked off their back tree. And when we were there a few years ago, and we went over to their house for dinner, and I went out to their backyard, picked some grapefruit, and had it. Now, here's the problem. I love grapefruit. But when you have a transplant, grapefruit's a really weird fruit. It can make your medication work really, really well, far beyond what it's supposed to do, or it can just stop working altogether. And one of the side effects of grapefruit is that it makes all your anti-rejection medicine just stop working.

So two years before I even had a transplant, they're giving you this information, and on the top of every page, it's like, "You can never, ever eat grapefruit again." Right? And I take that seriously, right? Because I want to go on living, right? My goal is to not do the opposite of what the medication that keeps me alive is trying to do. So we were eating something the other day, and I was like, "Oh, man, this reminds me of grapefruit." And Rachel's like, "Did you read the ingredients?" And I go, "Ah." Thankfully, I did not have grapefruit. But here's the thing, I take that warning label very seriously because I know it has an impact on my life, very literally. But we come to spiritual warnings that don't just have an impact on your life, but have an eternal impact on your soul, and we go, "Not that big of a deal."

One of the things that Paul is doing in this chapter is he wants us to see the seriousness of this warning. He's going to say, "Let me tell you, first of all, in the first half of the chapter, where you end up if you don't heed this warning." And it's not good. It's not a situation or an outcome that we want. And then in the second half of this chapter, he's going to show us the impact of this false teaching on our life. So first of all, he says, "You don't want where this ends up." And then secondly, and his language is pretty graphic in the second part, he's going to use some vivid imagery. That it's waterless storms. Promising refreshment but leaving you empty. Or hopelessness. The gloom of utter darkness. Or general disgustingness.

A dog returns to its vomit. Or a pig dives back into the dirt and the mud and manure after you wash it. Peter will spend the rest of this chapter trying to imprint and to convince and to show us that this warning is not just for us. But it is not to be avoided or ignored or taken lightly. Here's what you need to understand. What you believe has a direct impact on how you live. And so as Peter writes these in our text this morning, we see there are sort of two big categories of behavior that are going to be a problem in the church. One of them is going to be following this way of sensuality, and the way of truth will be blasphemy. And then the other part of this is greed that exploits those around them.

And so two things, right? Searching and seeking out all the things that make you feel good, and all of the money and the things that you can get and grab for yourself. But the heart of these two behaviors, seeking pleasure and seeking stuff, that's not the end of it. The heart of this and the seed of behavior that grows into the tree of sensuality and greed is found in chapter 3. This is now the second letter I am writing to you, beloved. In both of them I am stirring up your sincere mind by way of reminder that you should remember the predictions of the holy prophets and the commandments of the Lord and Savior through your apostles, knowing this, that first of all that scoffers will come in the last days scoffing with their own sinful scoffing,

with scoffing following their own sinful desires. And he is going to go on and say look at all these sinful desires, the root of this in chapter 3 in the very next verse, they will say, "Where is the promise of his coming?" That all of this sinful behavior is a result of denying the reality of the return of Jesus. And so what you find, the sin we see in chapter 2, has its roots down deep in a belief that is false. This warning that Peter is giving us is not unlikely or not applicable, and it has a direct impact on how we live. I want you to see how Peter goes about establishing this truth. He says, first of all, that there is a historic reality. The pattern of history demonstrates that there are false teachers. When he says false prophets also arose among the people,

speaking of the Old Testament, and you can read through the history of God's people and find false prophets time after time after time. If you want a really good picture of this, the book of Jeremiah. As Jeremiah goes head to head with the false prophets of Israel. All of Deuteronomy chapter 13 is about false prophets. And we see this conflict, not just in the history of God's people, but you and I see this every day in our world. Maybe not in a spiritual way, but in a physical way, right? That there will be counterfeits of the real thing. And sometimes it's a counterfeit designed to look exactly like the real thing, but it's not quite there. Alright, so we counterfeit money. We counterfeit designer bags. We counterfeit designer shoes. They look like the real thing, but the reality is they're not.

And we see it in our world, but it also happens spiritually. But it's not just the counterfeiting of faith, right? People try to make copies and piggyback off of successive things. A great example is Dr. Pepper. Alright, so you have Dr. Pepper, licensed physician, but then you also have, right, Dr. Thunder, Dr. K, Dr. Perky, which is the same evidently as Dr. Wham, Dr. Delight, Dr. R, my favorite, I don't think it's available anymore, was Dr. Holiday. It's only sold in Arizona, right? Dr. Olipop, which is the new probiotic soda. You can get it at Target, right? Just take any kind of similarly flavored beverage, throw Dr. in front of it, and people who like Dr. Pepper go, "Maybe I should try that." And you know what the newest thing is? It's not just buying sodas that are like Dr. Pepper with a doctor in front of them.

People are now going, "Hey, if you mix two parts Coca-Cola with one part root beer, you get Dr. Pepper." And so you're over here, and it's like, "Why don't we just go drink Dr. Pepper, right?" Like, "Why are we trying to get something that's almost as good when you can have the real thing?" And part of false teachers, they're doing exactly that. They're coming along, "It's just as good, it's just as great, but it's never quite the same." The other thing that we see in our world in terms of these things is sometimes people think something good and manipulate with it good. So, for example, a parent's love for a child is very good, and there is stuck in my head. I think I was back in college when I saw this as a mom lovingly putting her child on the bus.

Everybody's opening up their lunch. He opens his lunch up. Everybody has a Lunchable but him, right? And he's like, "Oh, mom doesn't love me anymore," right? The whole message of this ad was if you really love your child, you'll get him a Lunchable and send him to school with it. And so they're taking something good, the love of a parent, but then using it to what? Twist and manipulate to get you to do something else. And just like we see it in advertising in our world, we see it spiritually. And so Peter will say, "Look at the history," and we can. And we can see this happening throughout the history of God's people, but you can also look at the world in things like purses and sneakers and Dr. Pepper and TV advertising and see how the truth gets moved and copied and counterfeited and twisted.

But it's more than that. The reality of false teaching is prophesied. Jesus talks about it in Matthew 24. Paul says this in 1 Timothy chapter 4. Now the Spirit, that's the Holy Spirit, expressly says that in latter times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and the teaching of demons. And so if your response to spiritual warnings like the one Peter is giving us, and you look at that and go, "Well, I'm just an ordinary Christian. I don't need that." Right? Jesus said, "You need that." Paul says it. Peter says it. Now here in the midst of this spiritual battle, it's easy to get discouraged. And the undercurrent of this text, and in fact all of this book, is that God is in control. In fact, the darkness of consequences that we'll see next week is that you'll hear this phrase,

and I love it so much, that God knows how to rescue the godly. In the midst of all the struggle and the chaos and darkness. And so in this storm, there is a danger for us. And I don't know about you, but we tend to sometimes struggle with warnings. And I don't know, I was talking to somebody about this a couple weeks ago. Back when I was a kid, you would get a winter storm warning and it would say one to three inches of snow, or five to seven inches of snow, or I guess if you're Cody, thirty inches of snow, predicted for this weekend. But now, if you read the winter storm warnings, the language has gotten a little crazy. It's like, "If you leave your house, you will die." Right? "Death is imminent if you go outside."

And one of the reasons they do this, you know why? Because people don't listen to the warnings anymore. So they have to make them stronger and stronger and stronger. And Peter wants us to see how serious this warning is. And so look at what he says. "There will be false teachers among you." Right? So rain is fine when it's outside. It's very different when it's inside. So last year when I was switching out the hot water heater in the basement, on the side of the hot water heater there's a relief pressure plug or blow-off valve. And the problem in this particular scenario is like we were doing a whole new kind of water heater. I'd never installed a tankless hot water heater before. And I saw that there was a cap there, and I didn't think anything about it.

So I get everything turned on. The power is on. There's no sparks. I have an electric heat. I turn on the water. And next thing I know, right, the cap that I thought was the metal cap is actually used to plastic cover. And it has shot itself through a layer of sheetrock. And now there is like all of the water pressure of the city of Winchester just spraying into the downstairs of the church basement, right? Now that's a time to be concerned, right? Raining outside, that's fine. When it's raining inside, you have a problem. And what Peter is saying to the church, take this warning seriously. He says, "It's not raining outside, it's raining inside." It's not a distant problem. The other thing he's going to say, it's not always easy to spot. He says, "Secretly bringing in destructive heresies."

Now in some cases, this may be, and this word is intentionally, I think, sort of non-judgmental word of secrecy. Because sometimes destructive heresies are brought in simply through an ignorance of Scripture. Right? That we don't study, or have learned, or have searched the Scriptures as we should. And we're influenced into a wrong belief. But then there are others who come in. And what Peter is saying is you're not going to have somebody show up wearing a shirt that says "heretic." Right? You're not going to have somebody walk in and go, "Oh, obviously that guy's a heretic." Now I have a theory that there are certain haircuts. You see, this is one of the reasons I don't get my hair cut a lot. I don't want to accidentally end up here. Certain haircuts that can really show your theology.

And not everybody with this haircut is a heretic, but every heretic has this haircut. Right? And Peter goes, "There's no identifying marks." As much as you might want to try to look, you have to understand their teaching. And so what he is saying is that it's not always easy to spot secretly bringing in destructive heresies. And then there he says the problem that spreads. He says, "Inside the church," there will be false teachers among you on the inside, bringing upon themselves swift destruction, following sensuality, and because of them the way of truth will be blasphemed. Right? The sin in the church is not just a sin that affects the church. Right? The greed and the sin causes a blasphemy to the way that God has laid out for his people, not just in the church, but outside the church.

Right? Do you see it? Sometimes when preachers find themselves and say, I've got an old preacher who used to preach in West Virginia, and he told me that he had to come to Jesus moment with his sin because they used to put speeding tickets in the newspaper in Hampshire County every week. And he's like, the elders finally came in and said, "We're tired of seeing your name in the newspaper every week as a speeding ticket." He's like, "Are I going to afford it?" I'm like, "Yeah, but you're the preacher." Right? Stop. But right, that's not, Peter's not talking about speeding tickets, right? Bringing a black eye to the gospel he's talking about. And we see those failures of Christians, whether in leadership or in life where we have turned and followed our own desires or exploited others for our own greed or sensuality.

I mean, it's not just an inside the church thing. It's an outside the church thing, too. And there is hope. It may not seem like there is very much hope in this text, right? Peter's very hope is, "But false prophets arose among the people." You say, "Well, how is that hopeful, this historical reminder of false prophets?" Remember that Scripture includes context. It's not all written by itself. And what Peter is doing as this chapter begins is drawing a contrast between the hope of the gospel, the transformation and salvation and growth in Jesus Christ, and another way of living. He's saying, "Make sure you're anchored to your hope in Christ." And so, as Peter writes this storm warning that is coming from the church, the question is, "How do we respond to it?" One way, maybe, because heretics generally don't wear a t-shirt that says heretic, is we can begin to look with skepticism at those who surround us, right?

Begin to think and accuse in our minds. I don't think that's Peter's purpose. We can also fearfully lock our doors, right? Like the servant in the parable of the talents where he's afraid of losing, so he hides everything. Peter's answer in the church is not to start accusing everybody of being a heretic, and it's not to lock the doors and keep the good people in and the bad people out. The right response is to see that we are anchored to the rock that is Christ through the Word of God. Peter's just said that the prophetic word is more fully confirmed, like the Bereans in the book of Acts, when they encountered a teaching that they had not heard, searched the Scriptures, anchored in the Word of God to the rock that is Christ, but also anchored to the rock that is Christ through the prayer and the work of the Holy Spirit and through community.

And it may seem, like Peter's saying, community is the problem, right? You've got secret heretics. But the reality is that a transformed by Jesus, anchored to the rock of hope through His Word, empowered by His Spirit to discern, right? That group of people allows you to walk safely, to see your blind spots, to encourage you where you're struggling, to correct you when you're wrong. But there's more than all of these things, right? There is one who stands with us in the midst of the storm. And Brent talked about it, and the kids evidently talked about it last week. Jesus in the storm, and I always love that Jesus falls asleep. Because I'm always tired, right, Sunday afternoon. You've preached, and you've shared, and you've spent time, and now you're tired. And Jesus is so tired

because his ministry is so much bigger. He falls asleep in the middle of a storm, and the disciples say, "Wake up. Don't you care that we're perishing?" Jesus calms the storm and says, "Why are you afraid?" And his purpose is not to go, "The waves weren't that big. The wind wasn't that strong. You weren't sinking that fast." His purpose is to say, "Don't you know that when I am with you, you are safe?" And I want you to know this. Whether it's in a struggle for truth, with false teachers and heresies, struggling with discouragement or trials, struggling with temptation or hurt or uncertainty, that in the fact, in the midst of all of this, there is one who is with you in the storm. There is one who is within his church in the storm, who is, Revelation, is walking among the lampstands. Not distant from his church, but near it.

In fact, Hebrews chapter 13, the two sins mentioned here in these first verses of 2 Peter chapter 2, sensuality and greed. Hebrews chapter 13 talks about both of those. Immorality and the desire for money. And in fact, here's what he says, "The answer to both of these is the promise that I will never leave you nor forsake you." And he quotes from the Psalms. So we can confidently say, "The Lord is my helper. I will not fear. What can man do to me?" Hear those words in the midst of your storm. "I will never leave you nor forsake you." Here's the reality. Every single one of us always has an anchor in the storm. The question is not, "Do you have an anchor?" And is that anchor firmly affixed to the rock that is Christ? Growing up, sometimes we'd go down on Lake Champlain,

and we would stop, and we'd want to fish or swim, so we'd throw the anchor overboard. And sometimes, it would catch, and it would hold the boat still, but other times it would be a sandy bottom, and the next thing you find yourself is moving down the lake, dragging an anchor through the sand. All of us have something that we view as an anchor, and we throw it out. The question is not, "Do you have an anchor?" The question is, "What is it attached to?" Is it firmly affixed to the rock that is Christ? Or are you seeking your hope in someone else, or something else? Let's pray. Father in heaven, I thank you for Jesus and for grace. I thank you for how you care for us. I thank you for the hope. May our anchor be firmly affixed to the rock that is Christ. Through your spirit, may you give us discernment and wisdom

as we walk, not just through the struggles of false teachers and wrong belief, but as we walk through the storms of life, will you hold us close? It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.