Waterless Springs Part 1 2 Peter 2:10-22

When you think about what is most important concerning the health of anything in life, it starts with leadership. With good leadership, things are built up, but without good leadership, things fall apart.

Now when you think about it, when you think about a leader, a wise use of time is leaders training other leaders to take over when they're gone. And you see this in life. When a manager at a business, what they do is they train other managers, assistant managers, to take over when it needs to take place.

You see this with coaches. Coaches train assistant coaches when the need arises for the assistant coach to take place. You see this in ministry. Pastors, they can't do everything on their own, so they have other shepherds that work under them.

And not only that, but they have people who they send out. Sometimes a shepherd will go to a different church because a need arises where the shepherd needs to lead in that particular place. When we look at the life of the Apostle Paul, the Apostle Paul spent much of his time training other leaders.

This was a wise use of time. In 2 Timothy 2 .2, what he told Timothy is he said, what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.

Here Paul is talking to Timothy. Timothy was one of the younger men at this time. They estimate that he would have been about 20s or 30s. And Timothy was a very important man because this was a man who was going to be a shepherd of a local church.

So Paul spent time with them and he said, what you learned from me, you need to teach others also. And this is what Paul told Timothy in 1 Timothy 4 verses 14 through 16. I read this in the call to worship.

Do not neglect the gift you have, which was given you by prophecy when the council of elders laid their hands on you. Practice these things, immerse yourself in them so that all may see your progress.

Keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching. Persist in this for by so doing, you will save both yourself and your hearers. The saving that Paul is talking about here is not justification that you're counted with the righteousness of Christ.

What he's talking about here is sanctification. That when a pastor teaches the truth of God's word and lives a holy life that accompanies that teaching, what happens is people follow that example and health comes from that.

For a man to be qualified to be a shepherd, he must carry this out faithfully before God. Otherwise, problems will abound and these problems do abound with certain men unfit to be in Christian leadership.

Recently in our sermon series through 2 Peter, in chapter two, we have seen Peter warn his readers about false teachers. He warns them of these people who say they speak on behalf of God, but in reality, all they're doing is pushing their own agenda for their own personal gain.

Thus far, what we have seen in 2 Peter is that the focus has mostly been on errant teaching, but what he's gonna focus on in the remainder of chapter two is not so much the errant teaching that they bring forth, but the character of these people.

The character of these people is rotten and he's gonna explain what this character looks like. So this time, I encourage you to turn the Bible with me to 2 Peter, if you haven't already. 2 Peter, chapter two, and I'm gonna begin by reading this morning, not the whole text.

This is actually a three-week sermon and I know you're so glad we're not gonna do this all on one Sunday. Verses 10 through 22 and I'm gonna begin by reading verses 10 to the first part of verse 13, where Peter writes here.

For some context, I'm gonna read verse nine as well. Then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials and to keep the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgment, and especially those who indulge in the lust of defiling passion and despise authority.

Bold and willful, they do not tremble as they blaspheme the glorious ones. Whereas angels, though greater in might and power, do not pronounce a blasphemous judgment against them before the 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.

Here's our big idea, what this text is calling each of us to do. Realize that false teachers are revealed through their corrupt actions. False teachers are revealed through their corrupt actions. And we're gonna see this in these verses.

False Teachers Are Exposed by Their Corrupt Actions

But before we do, let me give you a little recap of where we've been. One week ago, we looked at verses four through nine. And in these verses, Peter explained to us a history of major catastrophes that happened historically.

Each of these catastrophes took place because of rebellion against God. The first rebellion was one third of the angels followed after Satan and rebelled and were banished by God out of heaven. The second rebellion was before the flood.

The wickedness of man increased and God judged the world by sending a flood on the earth. The third rebellion was the rebellion at Sodom and Gomorrah, these two wicked cities near the Dead Sea region where God just had enough.

And then he sent fire down on these two cities. And what Peter was trying to get across to us in this chapter is that just as God brought justice down on these circumstances, on these angels and on these wicked humans, so he's going to do the same thing to false teachers in the future.

And we need to hear this because we can get angry as we should be, but we need to understand that God is going to right every single wrong. With that, let's get to the text here and let's begin by looking at the first half of verse 10.

And you might be wondering, how relevant is this to me? How relevant is the topic of false teachers? And if maybe there was like one in a hundred pastors out there who were false teachers, this would not be a relevant topic for you.

But sadly, the number is much higher than that. The American evangelical churches is flooded with false teachers. And not just false teachers, but with those men who are born again, but they tolerate these people.

They even give them approval. They give them endorsements. So this is very relevant to us because Satan is very active. This is a huge problem. It's a pandemic and it's not just in America, of course, but we are Americans.

It's all over the world. And so this is a very relevant topic to each of us because we need to be able to spot these people. Because you listen to people on the internet and we need to understand, is this someone I should be trusting?

We need to ask those questions and we need to be able to move forward with confidence that the people we're listening to are true teachers of the word of God. So we're gonna look at 12 immoral characteristics over the next three Sundays.

Okay, and you might be thinking, man, this is gonna get dark. There's gonna be a reprieve next week because he's gonna talk about Balaam. And that's such a funny story. Okay, so we're gonna have some breaks here as we go through the next three Sundays.

But what we do is we go verse by verse through the Bible. So this is where we are. And this is very relevant though, like I said. So this is what God wants us to hear. Okay, so the first immoral character trait of false teachers is described in the beginning of verse 10.

And this immoral characteristic is that they have a lustful passion for the wrong things. Okay, let's read the beginning of verse 10 again, where Peter writes, and especially those who indulge in the lust of defiling passion.

Peter is, of course, describing false teachers here. And he focuses on this quality about them that they indulge in the lust of defiling passion. And when we think of lust, the first thing that comes to mind is sexual sin.

While that is certainly included here, what Peter is describing here is more general. The Greek literally says, these teachers are going after the flesh in corrupt passion. In the New Testament, the flesh is described as one pursuing one's selfish, sinful desires.

We're all born with these desires. The question is, are we gonna follow Christ and go towards Him, or are we gonna satisfy these sinful desires? These false teachers have strong desire, and strong desire isn't necessarily a bad thing.

We are to strongly desire the Lord and what pleases Him. But misplaced desire is where unbelievers get in trouble. Sinful desires lead to only a polluted life. Now, one week ago, we looked at the people of Noah's day, and we looked at the people of Sodom and Gomorrah.

And what we read in Genesis six is that the people were so bad that the Lord regretted that He made them. And so He judged the world by sending a flood on the earth. And one week ago, of course, we saw the same thing, a similar story in Sodom and Gomorrah.

It sadly can kind of look like, it kind of looks like modern day America when we describe Sodom and Gomorrah. And God was angry, and He sends fire to judge the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, as they too were going after the flesh in corrupt passion.

As one author wrote, the false teachers of Peter's era were slaves to the corrupt desires of the flesh. Everybody's a slave to someone. We're either a slave to Christ, or we're a slave to the flesh, these sinful desires.

You have to understand that. To be a slave to Christ is a good thing, right? It's a freedom. And Jesus says, if you believe in me, you are free. But to be, to pursue the sinful desires of the flesh, people think they are free, but really they're slaves to these destructive patterns.

They were given to all sorts of sin, these false teachers. And when you think of someone who is incredibly evil in one area, let's say a thief, for example, do you think the thief is going to be sterling in every other area?

If they're gonna go rob a bank, they probably have other issues in their life too, right? So when we talk about these false teachers, it's not that they're bad in just one area. If you were to look at their lives, you'd find, man, these people have filthy language, they drink too much alcohol, they're lustful after the opposite sex, they're this and this and this and this.

They're dishonest. There's a whole array of sins that they are involved in. Think of Judas, for example, the one who betrayed Jesus. We know Judas for the heinous sin of turning Jesus in to the Jewish authorities for him to be crucified.

John 12, six tells us that Judas, the keeper of the money bag, helped himself to the money bag. So he didn't just betray Jesus, he was a thief. False teachers not only teach false doctrine, they also have desires for all sorts of sins.

Galatians 5, 19 through 21, Keith read this this morning. This describes false teachers well. Now the works of the flesh are evident. Sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and he could keep going, but he just says, and things like these.

Peter is describing false teachers being overtaken by all sorts of sins as he describes their indulgence in the lust of defiling passion. So realize that false teachers are revealed through their corrupt actions.

And the first character trait is that they have a lustful passion for the wrong things. Not a desire for the Lord, but to satisfy their own sinful desires. The second character trait that we see in false teachers is this.

They reject true biblical authority. And we're gonna see this at the end of verse 10, where Peter writes that they not only indulge in the lust of defiling passion, but they despise authority. In the previous point, I mentioned false teachers are given to a full array of sins, not just one.

Now he kind of highlights specific sins. We're gonna see this over the next three Sundays. And in the middle of verse 10, Peter writes that these false teachers are those who are in the business of despising authority.

In Acts chapter 20, verses 29 and 30, the apostle Paul described false teachers rising up from within the church, speaking twisted things and drawing people after them. As they draw people from within the church after them, they are, what are they doing?

They are drawing people away from true biblical authority within the church. Do you know what false teachers love to do? They love to infiltrate sound biblical churches and cause confusion and draw people after them.

This happens. I've seen it. In my 37 years of life, I've seen this. I grew up in the Christian home and grew up in the Christian church. I don't even know why I say Christian church, right? It goes without saying.

But I grew up in this environment. I've seen this. 20 years ago, the church I grew up in and the church I later pastored in had a major church split. They went from 200 to 50 almost overnight. It was this bustling church that was just torn apart because of certain people.

There were lots of reasons why this happened. But one reason is that certain people started to raise a commotion. The pastor was challenged and people started to choose sides. It got to the point where the two pastors on the staff were let go.

There were some people with some strange views who were behind a lot of the commotion and the division. So what views am I talking about? Some in the church said they were prophets and prophetesses. They would say, I got a word from the Lord and they would get up in a church meeting and say, this is what the Lord told me.

Some said that if you're not using a King James Bible, you are sinning. It was funny, I went to a independent fundamental Baptist seminary. That movement actually has people who actually believe only the King James Bible is the right Bible.

Now the seminary I went to vehemently rejected that, which otherwise I wouldn't have gone to that seminary. But they said only the King James Bible is biblically faithful. And they even say that there's like a second act of inspiration that happened when the King James Bible was translated 400 years ago.

And so it was funny because one of my professors said to me as they were talking about this in one of the classes, he's like, you grew up in the free church, I'm sure you haven't dealt with this. I'm like, oh no, we dealt with this.

They came to our free church saying, King James only. So what happened 20 years ago at my old church was false leaders, false teachers rising up from within, spouting their own unbiblical views. And when this happens, it only causes problems.

It is the responsibility of the pastors and elders to deal with people like this. Sadly, 20 years ago at my old church, these people were not dealt with because frankly, the church lacked strong leadership and Satan used it to tear it apart.

These people despised authority and encouraged others to despise authority as well. This is what false teachers do. They cannot submit to the authority given by God in the local church. This is how false religions start.

This is how cults start. They break off from churches and they meet in homes because these strange views aren't found in local churches. So they have to go to homes. And what happens is someone with a massive ego starts one's own thing, gains followers.

These false teachers know how to prey on people's emotions and people follow them. False teachers do the exact opposite of what scripture says. Hebrews 13, 17 says to God's people, obey your leaders and submit to them.

For they are keeping watch over your souls as those who will have to give account. The Lord's design is to put in place servant leaders. As true shepherds lead God's church, the people are blessed and they want to submit to their leadership.

And we've talked about this before, but if there is a domineering leadership, then don't submit, of course. But God calls God's people to submit to true biblical leadership. And as you do this, you are submitting to the Lord Christ.

But false teachers want none of this. False teachers refuse to submit to biblical leadership because ultimately they refuse to submit to God. And instead they go off doing their own thing and they deceive people.

This is a clear mark of false teachers. They have a very difficult time submitting to authority of any kind. I mentioned the church 20 years ago, they had split. Guess what? Do you think they paid their taxes?

Nope. A lot of these people didn't pay their taxes. They thought the government's evil, so we don't have any responsibility to do anything. Yeah, and is the government evil? Yes, in a lot of ways it is.

And it's a lot worse today than it was then. But we should still pay our taxes, right? The Bible tells us to do that. It's very clear. Pay your taxes, Romans 13. These people wouldn't do that. They have a problem submitting to any kind of authority.

And what they're doing is that they're worshiping themselves leading their own movement to satisfy their own fleshly desires. So realize that false teachers are revealed through their corrupt actions.

And the second character trait is this. They reject true biblical authority. Okay, and here's our third character trait this morning. They are like foolish animals in their treatment with the demonic realm.

Now, this is one of those passages in the Bible where you wonder, what in the world is he talking about? So we're gonna read this here and then explain it. The end of verse 10 to verse 12, Peter says, bold and willful, they do not tremble as they blaspheme the glorious ones.

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

Now, Jude, I've mentioned this before, is very much a parallel letter to 2 Peter chapter two. And Jude in verses eight through 10 says, yet in like manner, these people also, relying on their dreams, defile the flesh, reject authority, and blaspheme the glorious ones.

But when the archangel Michael, contending with the devil, was disputing about the body of Moses, he did not presume to pronounce a blasphemous judgment, but said, the Lord rebuke you. But these people blaspheme all that they do not understand, and they are destroyed by all that they, like unreasoning animals, understand instinctively.

Now, this is a difficult passage, but it's very interesting. Both Peter and Jude give us a window into the demonic realm and the foolishness with which some confront it. What Peter is telling his readers and us is that one of the ways that these false teachers despise authority is by even going after those far more powerful than them in a foolish way.

Now, we might think, isn't it fair game to go after demons as Christians? And the answer is, of course, yes. We should fight the demonic realm. We primarily fight the demonic realm by standing on Ephesians 6, where our standing in Jesus Christ prevents the devil from doing anything against us.

As we resist him, James 4, 7 says, the devil will flee. But what Peter is telling us is that there are foolish ways to go after the devil and his demons. What we need to understand is that demons were once angels.

We looked at this one week ago. Revelation 12 describes the fall of one third of the angels from heaven as they rebelled against God. Angels are much different than we are. Angels are spirit beings, while we are embodied spirits.

We are bound by space and time. They are not. We have great limitations to our power. Their power is far greater than ours. When we confront the demonic realm, we need to remember this. What these false teachers were doing to the demonic realm was playing games with it, as if they had the authority to do this.

They would mock and ridicule the demonic realm as if they could do whatever they wanted. What we read in Jude is that the archangel Michael himself was not even this flippant with the demonic realm. Michael didn't taunt Satan when they fought over the body of Moses.

What did Michael do? Well, he spoke on behalf of the Lord, telling Satan, the Lord rebuke you. We don't show respect to Satan and demons in the same way we respect God, of course. We respect God because he's great and he's good.

But with the demonic realm, we are to understand who we are dealing with. We are to be careful with the demonic realm because these beings are far more powerful than we are. We shouldn't insult them, mock them, and make fun of them, but we should, in the Lord, rebuke them, following the example of Michael, the archangel.

But the false teachers' flippant, unserious, playful behavior towards Satan and his fallen angels shows their foolishness. But this is what false teachers do. They have no understanding of authority. They have no understanding of being in the presence of beings that are glorious in nature and far more powerful than they are.

You will notice at the end of verse 10 that demons are called the glorious ones. They are called this not because they're good. No, they're incredibly evil, of course. They are called this because God gave them a glorious nature when he created them.

So when humans confront the demonic realm, we need to understand this. We don't play games with demons. But in all seriousness, we rebuke them in the name of the Lord when we call on the Lord to be protected from their power against us.

In this way, we'll be different than the false teachers who are incredibly foolish in their actions. False teachers think they are the authority and they show their foolishness in these games that they play.

And what Peter does in verse 12 is that he compares these false teachers to animals. Okay, now I'm a lover of animals just like many in this room, right? But there's something about animals that he compares them to.

Animals are creatures of instinct. Animals live to survive. There's never been an animal who's committed suicide. Think about that. Their instinct is always to survive. No matter how much pain they're in, no matter how miserable their existence might be, they always live to survive.

That's their instinct. They live off instinct. They do whatever they need to survive as they eat, drink, build shelters. They respond to stimuli as God designed them to. Animals' minds are very simple.

Sometimes we see a beaver and what they build. I'm like, in that sense, it's complex. But when it comes to the deep things of life, they're very simple. Peter is comparing them to the animals. Animals don't offer solutions to the problems with the world, right?

You don't go to a monkey, although if you believe in evolution, maybe we should, right? Maybe they can offer us some advice. We don't go to animals and say, okay, we have this serious problem. We don't tell an animal, go run for president.

I mean, sometimes they might do better though, right? But we don't do these things. Animals don't sit around and ponder the meaning of life. They don't. That's just their nature. They are simple. Peter is comparing false teachers to them in this way.

As one author writes, false teachers are comparable to beasts that they have no rational capability, operating solely on self-indulgence and unthinking passion. Like animals, they make no positive contribution and would actually serve others best by being dead.

Okay, you might say, well, that's pretty harsh. Well, think about it. Most animals in the animal kingdom, animals do what? They eat other animals. Well, what do we eat? We eat animals. And we do it without shedding a tear because that's just the way God made it.

Humans are valuable. We are created in the image of God. You kill a human, you get the death penalty. You kill an animal for food. I mean, every November we do that here, right? With the deer season. That's just the way it is.

And so he's comparing, Peter's comparing these false teachers to animals who live off of instinct. And their instinct is always to do evil and they would be better off just dead because they offer nothing to society.

They only cause problems. They only live for their own selfish passion. And this is how they're compared to animals in this way. Animals are born to be caught and destroyed as Peter says. And so are these false teachers who in their instinct of evil will be destroyed under God's judgment.

Okay, so I hope that wasn't too harsh on animal lovers, right? I love animals, okay. But there's just some realities we have to live with here. And they are, to balance this out, they are a wonderful gift from God, okay.

So realize that false teachers are revealed through their corrupt actions. And the third characteristic is that they are foolish in their treatment with the demonic realm. Okay, here's our fourth characteristic that we need to realize that false teachers are revealed through their corrupt actions.

And that is this, they are entangled in trouble now and forever because of their wicked actions. So the end of verse 12 and the beginning of verse 13, Peter writes this, that they blaspheme about matters which they are ignorant and they will also be destroyed in their destruction, suffering wrong as the wage for their wrongdoing.

Now the translation suffering wrong that we have in the ESV Bible isn't the best translation. The Greek verb means to be damaged or to be harmed. So a better way to say this is that these false teachers are being damaged for the wage of their wrongdoing.

Recently in Mark Brooks Sunday School class through Galatians, we looked at the universal principle that a man reaps what he sows. Galatians chapter six verses seven and eight describes do not be deceived.

God is not mocked for whatever one sows that will he also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption. But the one who sows to the spirit will from the spirit reap eternal life.

And there's a proverb that says something similar. Proverbs 31 verses 31 through 33. They shall eat the fruit of their way and have their fill of their own devices for the simple are killed by their turning away and the complacency of fools destroys them.

But whoever listens to me will dwell secure and will be at ease without dread of disaster. What Peter is communicating about these false teachers is this. They are being damaged and they have no one to blame but themselves.

They experience the negative consequences of their actions. And there's a universal principle here, right? We see this in the agricultural world as the Bible describes. A man reaps what he sows. You reap what you sow.

This is true in agriculture and this is true in the spiritual life. False teachers as they continue in their false teaching and their evil lifestyle get themselves in trouble. They've more and more corruption.

Romans 1 verses 18 through 32 describes that the Lord gives sinful people over to their depravity. As they keep sinning, they get deeper and deeper into sin. So on Friday, my brother and I went hiking on the Superior Trail.

And slowly but surely, we're making our way up the trail because we have a goal of we want to hike the entire Superior Trail, which is about 300 miles. It starts down by Duluth and it goes all the way to Canada.

And so we get to the trail on Friday and guess what? We missed the turn. There was two trails and we kept going straight. We were supposed to veer off to the left and by the time we realized we were on the wrong path, we were about a mile and a half in.

So we reached the point where we're deciding, should we just turn around and go back or should we meet up with the trail at a different spot? And we decided, okay, my brother has his phone and he can see where the trail meets up.

We decided, okay, we're just going to meet up with the trail and we didn't know exactly what we were going to have to go through. But going off of the right path meant negative consequences for us, big time.

We went through this marshy area. Actually, there was like this mossy area where every time you stepped, your foot would go a little bit into the water. And so our feet were soaked and this wasn't even the wettest part of the path.

We found, we got on a road that took us a mile and a half north towards the trail. And we were thinking, okay, this trail has got to be at the end of this road. We get to the dead end and we realize we still have about three quarters of a mile to go to get back to the trail.

The problem is there's private property. And there's a sign there that says, do not trespass. And there was even a camera there. And it was the kind of place where you're thinking, this guy probably has a shotgun, okay?

So we're standing there kind of thinking, okay, we're really committed at this point. What are we going to do? And all of a sudden we see the mailman coming towards us and we're like, okay, let's talk to him.

Let's see what he thinks, what we should do. Maybe he knows these people. And we said, what do you think we should do? He says, I think you guys should just go for it. Like, okay. So that was the encouragement we needed.

We figured this is a sign from God. And so we go through their property and thankfully nobody stopped us. And I figured this is one of those scenarios where it's a gray area, okay? So a pastor doing this.

So we go through there and the grass gets longer as we go. Before we know it, we're in a marsh and our feet are getting wet. And then there's this pretty wide Creek that it's not like a six inch Creek that you can just walk through.

It's three, four feet deep. So we looked at it and we're thinking, how are we going to get through this? So we walk further down and then there's this little spot where you can jump over. And if you jump really far, you can jump on this little spot and then jump across to the other side.

So my brother did it first. I did a second, we made it, but we weren't done yet. There was still more marsh we had to walk through and we kept going and we finally got back on the path. Okay, so why do I share this story?

There's negative consequences if you get off the path. And it's not just for false teachers. It's for anybody who goes down the path away from God, right? Scripture always describes life as a path. There's the true path of following the Lord.

And if you get off that path, people think that they're going to be happy. People think that there's going to be blessing. People think that somehow they're going to be satisfied. And what they find is that there's negative consequences.

Even if for a short time, it's okay. Things get bad. And false teachers experience this. They experience the negative consequences of their choices. As Peter writes here, what they experience is they suffer wrong for the wage of their wrongdoing.

And it's what they get for what they do. You get what you deserve. And this is what their experience was. I don't know if you guys heard this, but there's a story of a pastor down in South Carolina by the name of John Paul Miller.

His life is a complete train wreck. And it's been all over media. This man years ago had multiple affairs. Somehow, this is how bad this church was, they just let him keep going as a pastor. And he kept going as a pastor.

And one of these women that he was having an affair with, he marries. And now this woman dies and they suspect foul play. They suspect that he was involved. Now he's innocent until proven guilty. We believe that as this church.

But no one's going to be surprised if this guy was somehow involved in her suspicious death, which was written off as a suicide. False teachers run into great problems on this earth with the corruption that they sow.

Sometimes they get away with things for a long time, but eventually it catches up with them. No false teacher will avoid what ultimately waits for them. As Peter once again writes at the end of verse 12 and the beginning of verse 13, they will also be destroyed in their destruction and suffering damage as the wage for their wrongdoing.

False teachers have trouble now as they entangle themselves in sin and experience the consequences of that. But the greatest trouble that they will face is in the future when God will judge them. They will be judged forever by God in the lake of fire.

This is their future. And this is what scripture talks about. Scripture doesn't coddle false teachers. We looked at Revelation when Jesus looked at, spoke to the seven churches of Revelation. We did this last summer.