WWUTT 351 False Teachers Among You?

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2 Peter 2 is a more complicated chapter than it might seem to be, but in these deep words are thoughtful instructions keeping us away from false teaching and in the truth of Jesus Christ when we understand the text.

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Many of the Bible stories and verses we think we know, we don't. When we understand the text as an online ministry committed to teaching sound doctrine and exposing the faulty, visit our website at www .utt

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.com. Now here's our host, Pastor Gabe Hughes. Thank you, Becky. We're in 2 Peter 2 today.

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If you want to open up your Bible and join with me there, this is a complicated chapter. And if you're familiar with this chapter, you might be thinking, well, he's just addressing false teaching, but he uses a lot of thoughtful wording here that's very deep and probing.

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And we're going to end up spending a few weeks in this particular chapter. There's really no breaks in his writing.

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And so I think what would serve us best is to read through the entire chapter and then we'll go back through and digest what is being said.

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So 2 Peter 2, beginning in verse one, 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.

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And many will follow their sensuality. And because of them, the way of truth will be blasphemed.

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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.

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For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to chains of gloomy darkness to be kept until the judgment, if he did not spare the ancient world, but preserve

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Noah, a herald of righteousness with seven others, when he brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly, if by turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes, he condemned them to extinction, making them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly.

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And if he rescued righteous lot greatly distressed by the sensual conduct of the wicked, for as that righteous man lived among them day after day, he was tormenting his righteous soul over their lawless deeds that he saw and heard.

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Then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials and to keep the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgment.

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And especially those who indulge in the lusts of defiling passion and despising authority. Bold and willful, they do not tremble as they blaspheme the glorious ones.

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Whereas angels, though greater in might and power, do not pronounce a blasphemous judgment against them before the

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Lord. But these, like irrational animals, creatures of instinct, born to be caught and destroyed, blaspheming about matters of which they are ignorant, will also be destroyed in their destruction, suffering wrong as the wage for their wrongdoing.

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They count it pleasure to revel in the daytime. They are blots and blemishes, reveling in their deceptions while they feast with you.

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They have eyes full of adultery, insatiable for sin. They entice unsteady souls.

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They have hearts trained in greed, accursed children. Forsaking the right way, they have gone astray.

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They have followed the way of Balaam, the son of Beor, who loved gain from wrongdoing, but was rebuked for his own transgression.

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A speechless donkey spoke with human voice and restrained the prophet's madness. These are waterless springs and mists driven by a storm.

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For them the gloom of utter darkness has been reserved. For speaking loud boasts of folly, they entice by sensual passions of the flesh those who are barely escaping from those who live in error.

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They promise them freedom, but they themselves are slaves of corruption. For whatever overcomes a person, to that he is enslaved.

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For if, after they have escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge of our

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Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overcome, the last state has become worse for them than the first.

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For it would have been better for them never to have known the way of righteousness than after knowing it to turn back from the holy commandment delivered to them.

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What the true proverb says has happened to them. The dog returns to its own vomit, and the sow, after washing herself, returns to wallow in the mire.

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So even though it is a very vexing chapter and some of the things that Peter really must address in this particular letter, it is also very beautiful in its wording.

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And so like I said, it's going to take a little bit of time to kind of sift through some of the things that Peter is saying so that we might understand the deep meaning that he implies with these particular words.

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And we find deep meaning even here in this first verse, a passage that is often taken to mean something that Peter does not intend with what he is saying.

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So second Peter chapter one, sorry, chapter two, verse one, 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.

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Now, it's that particular section in verse one, denying the master who bought them that is often taken to mean something that it doesn't really mean.

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Let's get there in stride. So first of all, the very start of the verse, but false prophets also arose among the people of among what people?

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Well, the Israelites. So just as there were false teachers that arose among the Israelites, so there will be false teachers that arise among you as well.

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We're starting this chapter with the word, but so it is a continuation of what we were talking about at the end of chapter one.

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Peter says, for we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our

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Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. For when he received honor and glory from God, the father and the voice was born to him by the majestic glory, this is my beloved son with whom

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I am well pleased. We ourselves heard this very voice born from heaven for we were with him on the holy mountain and we have the prophetic word more fully confirmed to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts, knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of scripture comes from someone's own interpretation for no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the

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Holy Spirit. So Peter is talking about how we as apostles himself and the other apostles, again,

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I'm not including me in that statement. The only apostles that we have ever been given and there ever will be are those apostles in the first century who by their teaching, the new

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Testament was written. There will be no other apostles after them. And the new Testament is clear on that teaching.

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First Corinthians 15, eight, where Paul says that as to one untimely born, Christ appeared to him.

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He was the last of all apostles to be appointed. There would be no other teachers after him, no other apostles after him.

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So what we continue to teach in the holy church of God is that which was taught by the apostles with no other people, no other men or women for that matter, proclaiming themselves as apostles for there will be no other to whom

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Christ has appeared and appointed apostleship. So Peter is talking about we as apostles, specifically him and James and John who were with Jesus on the

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Mount of Transfiguration. But this would include any apostolic ministry. And he equates that apostolic revelation with the prophets of old, the prophets who came before the cross, the prophets of the

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Old Testament. We have it even more clearly revealed to us than they did.

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As Peter is talking about here, we have the prophetic word more fully confirmed to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining at a dark place until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.

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And then he shifts into talking about those to whom prophecy was revealed in the Old Testament, knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of scripture comes from someone's own interpretation for no prophecy, no prophecy of old was ever produced by the will of man.

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But men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. So we're talking about the men of God, the prophets of Israel.

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So then we shift from that into the start of chapter two. But false prophets also arose among the people.

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There were sound prophets appointed by God to deliver the truth. But there were also false prophets who arose among them, just as there will be false teachers among you.

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So we have the true prophecy more fully confirmed. But that doesn't mean the end of false teaching.

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That's what Peter is talking about here. There were false teachers that arose among the people of God, and that will still happen even now within the church.

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There will be false teachers that will arise. They won't be part of the true church, but they will attempt to lead the church astray.

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There will be false teachers among you who will secretly bring in destructive heresies.

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Now this is really the only place in the Bible that we have that word heresies clearly articulated and used.

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What is heresy? Heresy is anything that is contradictory to the apostolic foundational doctrines that were given to us by the apostles appointed by Jesus Christ himself.

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And you must also think of the words of Christ as being delivered to us by the apostles. So when we read

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Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, we are not reading something that Jesus wrote down.

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We are reading what the apostles wrote down that Jesus said as guided by the

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Holy Spirit to write these things. God is still the author, but he is working through his apostles just as he worked through the prophets to deliver this word, to deliver these things.

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And again, we must remember that we are not following cleverly devised myths, but these things were made known to us by those who were eyewitnesses of the majesty of Jesus Christ.

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And so Peter is warning that just as there were false teachers that arose among the people of God in the

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Old Testament prior to Christ, prior to the cross and the revelation of prophecy in Jesus Christ, so there will also be false teachers that will arise among you.

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Paul warned about this also, and I think specifically of Acts chapter 20, when

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Paul addressed the elders of the Ephesian church and he said to them, pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock.

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If you're keeping notes, by the way, I'm in Acts chapter 20, beginning in verse 28, pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock in which the

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Holy Spirit has made you overseers to care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood.

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I know that after my departure, fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock and from among your own selves will arise men speaking twisted things to draw away the disciples after them.

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Therefore, be alert, remembering that for three years, I did not cease night or day to admonish every one of you with tears.

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In other words, Paul is saying, I delivered to you the full counsel of God. Remember what

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I taught you. I spent three years talking with you about these things from a genuine heart.

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There was no selfish ambition on my part. I sacrificed for you. I loved you to give you these things.

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But these men who are going to come in with these destructive heresies, they are after only their own gain and their own glory.

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So be watchful for them and see how even their approach is going to be different than the way that I taught you.

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Even their approach will be different, but you must remember the sound teaching that I gave you so that you will know the difference between the truth and the lie, the spirit of truth and the spirit of error.

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So Paul warning the Ephesian elders that even after he is gone, after the apostolic teaching that he delivered to them, there's going to come from even among them wolves in an attempt to devour the sheep.

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And so Peter speaks about this the same way. There will be false teachers among you who will secretly bring in their destructive heresies.

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They will teach things that are contrary to the sound foundational doctrine of apostolic teaching, that truth, which leads to life, the truth that saves the saving doctrine of Jesus Christ, of his death on the cross for sins and his resurrection from the grave.

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So that all who are in Christ Jesus no longer live in the lawlessness of this world.

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But we have been buried with him in our sins and our transgressions, and we have therefore risen with him to new life.

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This is the doctrine of salvation. It is the gospel of Jesus Christ that has come to all men so they might repent and turn from their sins and follow

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Christ and worship him as Lord. This is the doctrine that saves and anything that is contrary to the apostolic teaching does not save.

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But in fact, will lead a person to hell, not to the gates of heaven, but to the gates of hell, as I shared with my congregation yesterday.

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And what what are doctrines that are contrary? What are foundational doctrines? Let me ask the question that way.

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Well, we did a video on that. There are several ways that you can summarize what those doctrines are. But the what video that we did uses the word doctrines as an acronym.

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And I went through an essential doctrine series with my church. And hopefully we'll be finishing up a book soon that summarizes those sermons as I gave them.

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So using the word doctrines as an acronym, here's the way that you can remember some essential doctrines.

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The letter D stands for the deity of Christ. It is necessary to know that Jesus is

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God O stands for original sin. We must know that we have sinned against a holy

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God and turn from that sin and follow Christ who paid for that sin.

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For if you do not know that you are a sinner, then how can you call Christ savior? Because you don't know what he has saved you from.

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The letter C stands for canon, which is just another word for the Bible. It is an essential doctrine to know that the

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Bible is the word of God and it is our ultimate authority. The letter T stands for Trinity, knowing that God is

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God, the father, God, the son and God, the Holy Spirit, three persons, one God.

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The letter R stands for resurrection, knowing that Christ has resurrected from the grave for as possible.

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The apostle Paul says to the Corinthians in first Corinthians 15, if Christ has not been raised from the dead, no one gets raised from the dead and you're still dead in your sins and your faith is hopeless.

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The letter I stands for incarnation, knowing that Jesus Christ was fully man and fully

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God and all the doctrines that are implied in the incarnation as well.

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The letter N stands for new creation, knowing that in Christ we are a new creation. The old is passed away.

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The new has come. We do not live like the old man anymore, but we are new in Christ.

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The letter E stands for eschatology or another word for the study of the end times, knowing that Christ will one day return and judge the living and the dead and usher in his peaceful kingdom forever.

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And I have added in an S to that acronym. I'm borrowing the acronym from Hank Hanegraaff, but I've added an

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S, which is salvation by grace alone through faith alone, knowing that that is the only way that a person is saved and not by works.

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So these are, that's a very simple method to remember some essential doctrines and anything that is contrary to those essential doctrines is heresy.

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And like I said, damnable heresy for they bring in destructive heresies, even denying the master who bought them, bringing upon themselves swift destruction.

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And many will follow their sensuality and because of them, the way of truth will be blasphemed.

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It's interesting reading that phrase today, that verse two, just the day after it was announced that Eddie Long had passed away from cancer,

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Bishop Eddie Long, who was a pastor of a church outside of Atlanta, mega church leader, and a very horrible man in terms of not only the heresy that he preached, he was a prosperity gospel preacher, but also because he was a sexual predator.

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He had two wives that I know of. I don't know if he was married more times than that, but one of his wives who filed divorce against him in 2011 said that he was cheating on her with boys, had been sexually molesting young men.

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And so you have this man who was preaching heresy and following his own sensuality.

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And because of him, the way of truth has been blasphemed among many would look at the church and say, look at guys like this.

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You want me to repent of sins of this world and follow Christ when you got men like that who are claiming to preach the gospel and yet is being a sexual predator with young men.

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So anyway, like I said, it's interesting to be reading that verse after Eddie Long just died yesterday and this being one of those, he being one of those very teachers that this passage is warning about.

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But as we bring this to a conclusion today, the thing that I want to address is is something that I stated in the very beginning, that phrase, even denying the master who bought them bringing upon themselves swift destruction.

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That's a verse that gets abused to say that because Peter said that that Jesus bought these false teachers with his death.

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Therefore, the doctrine of effectual atonement is a false doctrine.

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Now, effectual atonement is more commonly known as limited atonement, but that's a terrible name.

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I love the doctrines of grace. I am not crazy with the tulip acronym and the names that have been given to those doctrines.

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Effectual atonement is a much better term. So basically, the point is this was

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Christ's death on the cross effective or was it ineffective? It was effective, right?

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Jesus Christ did not waste a single drop of his blood. Therefore, he accomplished with his sacrifice specifically what he meant to accomplish, and that was to atone for the sins of those for whom the atonement was specifically meant.

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The atonement is sufficient for everyone, but it is effective only for those who are elect, predestined from the foundation of the world.

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And as I've said many times before, we don't get to know who the elect are. God knows that we are to preach the gospel without prejudice to everyone in the world.

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The spirit of God will work his power in those who are elect, drawing them from sin into justification in Christ by his sacrifice on the cross.

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There are those that will argue with that doctrine, and they will point to 2 Peter 2, 1 as an evidence.

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Well, Jesus died even for false teachers. So therefore, since he bought false teachers, his purchase could not have been only the elect.

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But here's the problem with that argument. Or here's the best way to understand 2 Peter 2, verse 1.

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Know that Peter often uses Exodus language. And we've talked about this before, particularly in 1

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Peter, where he will talk about Christ being our deliverer. And we have been delivered from the domain of darkness into his marvelous light.

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Well, this term deliverer is Exodus language, just as God delivered the

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Israelites from slavery in Egypt into the promised land. Now, not all of Israel was delivered into the promised land.

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There were many who did not follow God into the promised land, and they died in the wilderness.

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So you could say they were delivered from slavery, but they were not delivered into the final reward.

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And so the same thing applies here with the term bought. Bought is Exodus language.

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It's used in Exodus 15, 16, where God talks about purchasing Israel for himself.

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He purchased them out of slavery like you would buy a slave out of slavery and into instead the freedom of Christ.

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But that doesn't mean that having purchased Israel, that they were all delivered into the reward of the promised land.

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Again, there were many that died in the wilderness. So though they were brought out of slavery, they still did not receive the final prize.

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And so the same thing is being said here of those who are false teachers. So the best way to understand

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Second Peter two one is to look at verse 20, where it says, for if after they have escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge of our

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Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overcome. The last date has become worse for them than the first.

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So specifically, specifically what Peter is talking about here is teachers who looked like they were saved on the outside, but really they weren't.

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There was there was an outward appearance, but there was no inward reality of their saving faith.

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So it may have won them out of worldliness and into some sense of spiritualness.

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So they were out of the the destructiveness of this world and living in such a way that was that was really quite healthy, perhaps, but it was not a genuine saving faith.

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And they went right back into not only teaching destructive heresies, but following their own sensuality.

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And because of them, the way of truth is blasphemed. Something that Andy Stanley is very fond of saying is that if you live as a

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Christian, if you follow the words of the Bible, it's a much better life for you than if you weren't following the teachings of Scripture.

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Now, I think that Andy is right. But the problem with following that teaching with Andy doing this pitch of, hey, just do what the

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Bible says and you'll have a much better life and not calling sinners to repent from sin and follow

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Christ. He's going to turn people into exactly what Peter is talking about here in second

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Peter to one. They were one out of worldliness, but their hearts were still far from God.

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So they might look saved on the outside, but inside they are still following the same destructive lies and heresies of the devil that even the worldly people are following.

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And so we must teach the full counsel of God, the full authority of the word of God, leaving nothing out so that those who are lost might find their way according to the spirit of truth and they may escape from the snare of the devil after being captured by him to do his will.

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As Paul talks about in second Timothy chapter two, let's conclude with prayer and we'll pick up there tomorrow as we continue this discussion of second

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Peter chapter two. Our great God, we thank you for the salvation that we have in Christ having brought us from darkness into your marvelous light.

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And I pray that you would continue to teach us these things as we dwell upon this, as we meditate upon the words that we have read here, as we desire to be a people who is pleasing to the

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Lord, who is doing what Jesus told us to do as we desire to be a people who are not vulnerable and susceptible to the lies of the devil.

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But we have been trained by the truth of God, constantly applying these truths to our hearts and minds.

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We are able to keep ourselves from the devil's schemes and walking in the path of righteousness.

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So continue to perfect this in us as we go, not just thinking about these things as we hear them declared, but even meditating on them as we go throughout our day, keeping us, our feet sure on the path of Christ Jesus, the narrow road.

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So we might enter through the narrow gate and be saved. In the name of Christ we pray.

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Amen. This is a protection of First Southern Baptist Church in Junction City, Kansas. Find us on the web at www .utt