Despising God's Word

We're going to be back in Jude, and we're going to finish up our study today of taking God's name in vain. It's not an exhaustive study, but we've been doing this over several weeks so we can understand what it is that Scripture teaches in this regard and who it is that we are warned against as far as those who take God's name in vain and teach falsely about God.

Let us pray before we get started. Lord Jesus, again, we thank you for your word. We ask that you would send your Spirit so that we may rightly understand it, so that we may know and believe what it is that you have done for us and what you would have us believe as well as understand how we are to walk in freedom now that we have been set free by Christ.

We ask this in Jesus' name, amen. We're back in Jude, and see who can do this without looking at their Bible. Yeah, it's a closed book quiz, and if you don't pass, we're going to have to hold you back a grade.

You guys will have to keep coming back to Sunday school again next year. So, I'm just saying. All right, so here's the question. Without looking at your Bibles, what are the three prototypes, if you would, for the major false teachers as explained by Jude?

Who or what are the three prototypes, main types of false teachers as were warned about by Jude? Balaam. Got Balaam? Korah. Korah. And Cain. Do you remember what is the primary issue with Cain? Faith.

Doesn't have faith. Right? Balaam was a prophet for profit. Prophet for profit. Korah is a rebellion against the offices that God has instituted. So last week we talked in depth about Korah's rebellion, and we gave some examples within the visible church today.

Korah's rebellion is alive and well, where those congregations that are hostile to the pastoral office do not recognize it as a God-given office, or they put people into that office whom God's Word excludes as those who are qualified to be in that office.

So it's a visible manifestation of Korah's rebellion, if you would. And we noted the fact that pastors, as being called by the Holy Spirit to actually fill the office and to be pastors, are not uppity about themselves.

And so the idea here is we recognize that where two or more are gathered and there's a congregation, that there is an office that needs to be filled, and that the congregation, through the working of the Holy Spirit, calls a pastor, the pastor fills that office.

And the idea then is that he has duties that he is to be fulfilling, as laid out by Scripture. He doesn't get to invent his own duties. And fortunately, I know of quite a few pastors who are very busy.

In fact, if you were to look at their schedules from week to week, they are just packed full. Just absolutely packed full. But they're busy doing other things than the things they're called to do, which is a very scary thing, too.

So you can even say that in one sense, knowing that, that pastors also may be engaging in a form of Korah's rebellion by refusing to do the things that God's Word calls them to do. To make disciples, to baptize, to teach, to rebuke, to correct, to train, all these things.

The pastoral office is a very crazy place, the best way I can put it. So let's put this all together then. So we've done the work on Cain, Balaam, Korah. And now let's work back through. We're going to work back through Jude, and then we're going to note a cross-reference here.

All of this is under the umbrella topic of what does it mean to take God's name in vain. And we'll see what Scripture warns us in this regard. You'll note then that the epistle of Jude and 2 Peter, these two are kissing cousins.

They're pulling off the same themes. But then let's work back through Jude. Jude verse 1. Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ, brother of James, to those who are called, beloved in God, the Father kept for Jesus Christ, may mercy, peace, and love be multiplied to you.

Beloved, although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith once for all delivered to the saints. Now, if you remember a few weeks back, we noted that Jude is written to whom?

Who said us? It's written to us. It's a Catholic epistle. It's a universal epistle. It is written to you, to y 'all, to me. So it's written to all of us, or as they say in the South, all y 'all. So it's written to all y 'all.

So that means all y 'all are to be contending for the faith. Notice that contending for the faith is not limited to pastors. It's written to all y 'all. All y 'all are to contend for the faith, and here's the reason why.

For certain people have crept in unnoticed who long ago were designated for this condemnation. They are ungodly people who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality and deny our only Master and Lord Jesus Christ.

Now, I want to remind you, although you once fully knew it, that Jesus, who saved a people out of the land of Egypt... See, remember what we said today. Who is the Bible about? Jesus. Who said it was about Jesus?

Jesus. Jesus said it's about Jesus. So Jude here, as a careful student of Jesus, notes that it was Jesus who saved a people out of the land of Egypt. Now, in all of our readings in the book of Exodus, have we seen any Exodus text that says Jesus is the one who led the children of Israel out of Egypt?

No. Well, how do you know this? Well, it's all about him. He had to be the one who did it because, you know, he's God. See how this works? So Jude is a careful student of scripture, and he knows that the Bible is about Jesus.

Jesus saved a people out of the land of Egypt. Afterward, he destroyed those who did not believe. Yet, in like manner, these people, the ones who've crept in, right? These people, relying on their what? Dreams.

Hmm. So if I were to come and say, Kongsvinger, I had this dream last night that there was a burrito. I usually have dreams about food. It's very important. Yeah. See, I'm good on the eating thing, not the fasting thing.

So anyway, if I had this dream, and the burrito dream means that God is telling us that we need to put some more carne asada into our burrito.

A burrito stand at church after.

Yeah, so we need a burrito stand. You're sitting there going, he's lost his mind. It's time to take Pastor Roseborough and have him go somewhere else. But you'll notice here, now what I'm saying kind of jokingly and tongue in cheek, I can point you to congregation after congregation after congregation where either the pastor, the pastor's wife or somebody in authority or somebody within the congregation is given the microphone and they get up and they preach from and exegete their dreams.

With the belief that God the Holy Spirit is speaking a fresh word in their dreams. You know, no. So one of the things we learn about these false teachers is they rely on their dreams. They defile the flesh.

They reject authority. Hmm. Reject authority. I wonder if that has something to do with Cora's rebellion. So now you can kind of see it. They reject authority. They reject the authority that God has given to those in particular offices.

They 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 blast of misjudgment, but said the Lord rebuke you.

But these people blaspheme all that they do not understand. They are destroyed by all that they, like unreasoning animals, understand instinctively. Isn't it interesting that scripture in describing these false teachers describes them as, well, irrational.

Describes them in terms that these people are kind of crazy. They're doing stuff that, well, doesn't make any sense. So they're following their own inner instincts and they are like unreasoning animals.

Woe to them. And when the Bible says woe, that's a phrase of judgment. Woe to them. They walked in the way of Cain. Now we see it. They abandoned themselves for the sake of gain to Balaam's heir, perished in Cora's rebellion.

These are hidden reefs at your love feasts as they feast with you without fear. They are shepherds feeding themselves. Isn't that fascinating? Describing pastors who are of this ilk, they feed themselves.

It's all about what I get is the way they think. So they feed themselves. They are waterless clouds. What a great description. Waterless clouds swept along by winds. Can you imagine how awful that would be here?

I mean, the farmers here rely on good weather in order to grow their crops. And they're just weeks away from putting those crops into the field and praying for the good weather and the grace of God so that those crops grow and that they are able to yield a good harvest.

But could you imagine if the entire summer here was spent where every time we saw a dark cloud coming over the horizon, that dark cloud never dropped any rain? The land here would become parched. In the same way, false teachers are like that.

They stand in the pulpit, or you have to say it nowadays, they stand up on stages. They stand up in the pulpit or on a stage and words and words and words and words and words and words come flowing from their mouth.

And not a one of them feeds Christ's sheep or drops any of the refreshing rain of the gospel on those who are hearing. Yeah, good analogy. It's a biblical one. It's a biblical one. They are waterless rain clouds.

So their job is to get up and be a rainmaker, if you would. Now, I have a story that's kind of silly along these lines. Years and years and years ago, when I worked in the corporate world, my boss wanted to do some trendy technology project.

And, you know, so I was doing R &D for our company. And he wanted to get venture capital to support this project that we were working on, which didn't actually make sense to me. But we traveled to Silicon Valley and attended several conferences to help explain how you go about getting venture capital for technology projects and things like this.

And that was the day, that was back in the day when the business world kind of went crazy with these bizarre titles. I mean, have you ever seen the title for like the guys who run Ben and Jerry's? You know, I mean, if you look this up, like the people who work for Ben and Jerry's ice cream, they have crazy titles for themselves.

So I was having a conversation with this one lady about our project and our need for venture capital. And she looks at me and says, so what you're really telling me is that you need a rainmaker. Yeah, we need someone to bring the rain.

I was clearly out to sea in a dinghy without paddles. I mean, that was that kind of conversation. I'm doing everything I can to just be polite but not look stupid. But I ended up looking stupid anyway.

But that's because what I do, I'm gifted at that. But so the idea then here is that, you know, think of it this way, a pastor who is doing his job is a rainmaker. Does that make sense? And in this sense, the rain that is being brought is the word of God, the rain of the gospel that comes and refreshes us and causes the word to grow in our hearts and yield a crop.

And so the idea that so right way of looking at it is a good pastor. You can think of him as one who is a rainmaker, which always then begs the question, you know, for those who are listening at home on the Internet, you know, is your pastor bringing the rain or is he a waterless rain cloud?

They are fruitless trees in late autumn, twice dead. Now, in my yard, we have a crab apple tree and it starts off with these beautiful blooms in the spring and then that settles down into the green leaves.

But then starting in the late summer, in the early part of the fall, the branches start to kind of bow down and it's heavily laden with food for my squirrels, apparently. But, you know, it's actually quite amazing to see.

And then could you just imagine an entire orchard of like real apple trees? When is the harvest? It's in the fall. So the false teacher is like a fruitless tree in the autumn. You're supposed to be producing apples.

Where's the fruit here, buddy? So a fruitless tree in autumn is good for what? Firewood. Yeah, right. You got to get rid of that thing. So notice how how scripture describes these false teachers. They feed themselves.

They're waterless rain clouds. They're fruitless trees in late autumn. They're twice dead, not just dead. They're twice dead. They are uprooted, wild waves of the sea casting up the foam of their own shame.

They are wandering stars. Now, what what is the significance of a wandering star? I mean, think of it this way. How did the people in the ancient world navigate when they were in ships? Stars, you get that thing out and what do you point that thing to?

Whatever it's called, you point it to the North Star because the North Star don't move. It's anchored up there in the horizon. And so that's the idea. Anchored star is one you can navigate by. A wandering star, if you were to literally be on a sea voyage without any modern navigation equipment and you were to try to navigate from here to Europe, across the Atlantic, and you used Jupiter as your way of figuring out which way to go, how well would you do?

Yeah, you might be shocked that you don't end up in Paris, you know. So the idea here is, is that a wandering star or even a planet is one that you cannot navigate by. You have to navigate by something that is fixed.

Now, that's an important metaphor then. And the reason why is because sound doctrine, remember what Jude said, the faith once delivered to the saints, does Christian doctrine move? No. Sound biblical doctrine is fixed.

You can navigate by it. You know what it is. You pass it off from generation to generation. Somebody who is a wandering star as a pastor is teaching you stuff that has never been heard before. Or you can find its origin and its origin is in human history and in human hearts, not the written word of God.

Does that make sense? So a fixed point then is the point the faith once delivered to the saints and the pastors to preach that so that he is not a wandering star. His preaching is akin to what you get to be able to navigate by the North Star.

So these folks, they are wandering stars for whom the gloom of utter darkness has been reserved forever. Notice their fate is the same fate as the demons.

Steven? Kretzmann says about that. Yeah. That's another way of putting it. That's another way of putting it, yeah.

Yeah. Whatever happened to that fellow? Yeah, he burst onto the scene and quickly disappeared. What I always find fascinating, any of you ever spend any time in used bookstores? Or is that just me? OK, have you ever looked at the religion section, a Christian section of a used bookstore?

You buy them for a nickel, right? And if you look back through, I mean, look at the covers. Number one bestseller, 1956. And nobody talks about this fellow anymore. And the stuff that was in that book, nobody's teaching that anymore.

I mean, who is out there doing the late great planet Earth Bible study right now? Hal Lindsey. Nobody is. You can buy Hal Lindsey's book for 10 cents. Dianetics. Dianetics. Yeah. That's not Christian.

That's a different thing altogether. I think that's a Christian. Well, what is the name of that group? Scientology, right? Yeah. Yeah. But the idea here is that you go back through the used bookstore and you see that the used bookstore is literally like the graveyard of theological shipwrecks because these guys come onto the scene and they've got the latest, the greatest, the most relevant, the coolest, the hippest, the church of what's happening now, theology and doctrine.

And everyone pays attention to them for just that brief amount of time. They are the darling of Christianity. Everything they say is like the current fad. Think about this. I'm going to mention a book and I've seen lots of them in the used bookstores.

You ready? You'll remember it. Prayer of Jabez. Nineties. Nineties. We're not that old. That's not that old, right? Who's doing the prayer of Jabez Bible study today? Do you know anybody? Oh, we've got to do that prayer of Jabez thing.

And what a completely self-centered Bible study, by the way. The whole prayer is, Lord, increase my territory. I want my territory increased. My territory needs to be slimmed. Anyway, so you get the idea.

All right. So talking then about these fellows, and actually this also includes ladies, these are people for whom the gloom of utter darkness has been reserved forever. It was also about these that Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied saying.

Now this is a fascinating thing because this is a piece of extra biblical literature that has been put into the Bible because this piece is actually correct. And if you want to know, there are two books in particular that are extra biblical that have parts of them put into the scriptures that are correct, but we do not recognize them as scripture.

Those two books are the book of Enoch and the book of Jasher. If you ever heard of them, they're fascinating reads, but they're not scripture. They're errant. Clearly there's errors in them. And some of the errors are quite obvious.

But they basically the book of Enoch and the book of Jasher reflect kind of an oral history that got written down at some time and parts of it are accurate. Parts of it are accurate. And for that reason, the book of Enoch and the book of Jasher are kind of informative, but that you can't rely on them, you know, because we don't know which parts are real or not.

Yeah. No, those are not. Those are not. Those are not apocryphal books. So that's not going to be in the body of work that we call the apocrypha. That would be like first and second Maccabees, you know, the long version of Daniel and things like that.

Enoch and Jasher, these are extra biblical books coming out of Judaism. So they're informative. And so here we have one of these books being actually quoted from. It was about these that Enoch the seventh from Adam prophesied, saying, Behold, the Lord comes with ten thousands of his holy ones to execute judgment on all and to convict all the ungodly of all their deeds of ungodliness that they have committed in such an ungodly way.

So notice the Holy Spirit now has picked up a piece of this old book, put it into Scripture and said that Enoch was the one who prophesied these words and he was prophesying about these false teachers.

And notice kind of the triple ungodly to execute judgment on all the ungodly of all their deeds of ungodliness that they have committed in such an ungodly way. Isn't it fascinating? Because these are people who, if you were to look at them or listen to their followers, people would say, oh, that's the most godliest man of God that I know.

Enoch prophesied about them and said they are utterly ungodly. They're like triple ungodly. They've committed all these things in an ungodly way and of the harsh things that ungodly sinners have spoken against him.

These are grumblers. They are malcontents, following their own sinful desires. They are loud mouth boasters, showing favoritism to gain an advantage. This doesn't sound anything like the people who are qualified to be pastors.

Loud mouth boasters, showing favoritism to gain an advantage. And he continues, but you must remember, beloved, the predictions of the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ. They said to you, in the last time, there will be scoffers following their own ungodly passions.

It is these who cause divisions. They are worldly people, devoid of the Spirit. Scoffers, rebellious. I think of the emergent church movement, which thankfully shipwrecked quickly. But the word scoffer is one of the ways in which I would describe the major leaders of the emergent church movement.

You say to them, God's Word says homosexual relations and attraction are sinful. Pah, they would say. When I had a conversation with Brian McLaren face to face, this is a fellow who denies that Christ died as our substitute on the cross.

He hates that doctrine. I asked him straight up, Brian, what do you do with the passage in Isaiah that says He was pierced for our transgressions? He was bruised for our iniquities. The punishment that brought us peace was upon Him.

Brian McLaren said, it all depends on what the word for means. Yeah, that's Bill Clinton's response. It all depends on what is, is. Yeah. Still can't believe he was here just a few days ago. Missed it.

Darn. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Here's the difference. Okay, so you go back to the 1800s, the 19th century. What happens in American society, kind of, it's not just American society, but global society, right about the time of the Civil War.

What really comes into prominence? Kind of two things. Transcendentalism and the theory of evolution. Kind of think about this. So it was during the period, like immediately before the Civil War and following, that transcendentalism was like the en vogue thing here in the United States.

And think of the impact this has on the culture as a whole. Transcendentalism is very emotive, emotional, feelings-based. And it's a rejecting of the cold, calculating, enlightenment deism. And so it flips, you know, America flips from being kind of a rationalistic, logical society to now we're touchy-feely, lovey, feeling emotive, whatever.

And so what happens at that time is that the churches, many of them are holding the line, but some of them are starting to flip. And with this movement away and a rejecting of the authority of God's word through the undermining of scripture because of evolution and things like that, Christians kind of became a little bit wobbly in the last part of the 19th century going into the 20th.

And this in part then explains where the fundamentalist movement came from. It was a reaction against the liberalizing tendencies. So in the broader culture then, there weren't a lot of fellows who in the churches had the freedom to just preach and teach whatever they wanted to.

You know, for instance, in pretty much all of the mainline denominations, if somebody got up and started teaching what Charles Taze Russell taught or Joseph Smith or, you know, who's the, Ellen White and people like, right, people like that.

If they were to get up and do that within a particular denomination, they would have been thrown out. There was still doctrinal, you know, accountability in place that somebody could be brought up on false doctrine charges.

But what ended up happening with people kind of losing, things starting to get shaky, is that people like Russell and Ellen White and others, they were able to kind of step outside of those institutions and draw a group after them to follow them.

And they were the exception, not the rule. But in the decades and really more than a century since, we've seen a progressive decline in sound doctrine and a growing and steady increase in false teachers to the point where, you know, as somebody who's like kept an eye on evangelicalism, you know, for a long time now, and my Bredo program's been around for almost 10 years, it is way different.

Evangelicalism is way different and way worse than it was 10 years ago when I started my program. It is becoming very hard to find evangelical churches that are being taught any kind of exegetical Bible teaching at all.

And among all of the most popular megachurches, the guys are complete hacks. And you have to understand that purpose-driven preaching is a form of prosperity preaching. It's just kind of a less crass version of it.

And so, like next week, we're going to make a transition into the second table and we're going to start talking about the fourth commandment to honor your father and mother. But as part of the foundation for next week's lesson, that's going to actually require us to kind of hit head-on this idea that's very prevalent in Christianity today, that God has a very unique and specific purpose for which He's created you.

That's actually not what Scripture says. And that particular doctrine is causing a lot of problems. And it's a form of a very self-centered teaching regarding sanctification. But it's in the same ballpark, it's in the same spectrum as prosperity preaching.

And the reason why is because rather than teaching you that God is going to give you a Mercedes-Benz and a mansion and all that kind of stuff like we have any of those here in Grand Forks anyway, you know, not really, but rather than saying God's going to give you that, instead God's going to give you power and influence, a purpose, you're going to change the world and stuff like that.

And that's not what Scripture sees. So we're going to tackle that next week.

Another explanation I used, all within a... Yeah. And it was kind of, the explanation I heard is it was a spin-off where it was... Yeah. Of Wesleyanism. Yep. And so these sects grew up. We were in that part of New York over Christmas, and the diverse spirituality stuff continues to this day.

Yeah. Now, revivalism has its own consequences, and revivalism does play into this as well. And so in revivalism you have, you've got Finney's New Measures. And Finney was one of these fellows who believed that, you know, just given the right theatrics and the right methods, he can bring anybody into Christianity.

And his revivalism spread throughout the country at the same time as transcendentalism and all this kind of stuff. It's kind of concurrent streams that collide. And we're still reeling from the effects of this.

We really still are. It has not washed out of Christianity at all. It's still embedded sharply in it. But it's fascinating that you mention that area, because that was part of the area that has come to be known as the burned-over district.

The long-term effect of revivalism is it's like an herbicide. It destroys all of the plants in such a way that gospel can't even take root and grow. And so that area is a pretty dark region. Tough to find.

Do you drive? Yeah. I'm surprised that some of the car companies haven't figured out how to put a psychic reading in our dashboard. You're going 60 miles an hour. And if you're a Sagittarius, today it's going to be, you know...

Never mind. I saw photos on the internet. Whoa. That's all I can say. Whoa. I was a little... I missed Woodstock. I was a little young. I don't remember it, and I wasn't there. He drove by. All right.

So let's come back now to our text so we can kind of see these themes. So you must remember, the prediction is of the apostles. They said, in the last time there will be scoffers following their own ungodly passions.

It is these who cause divisions, worldly people devoid of the Spirit. Now here's another important thing. No joke. If I had a dollar for every time I was rebuked and told I was causing division in the body of Christ, I would be so wealthy it's not even funny.

And why is it that people rebuke me and say that I'm causing division in the body of Christ? Why? Because I'm rebuking those who are teaching false doctrine. You see, within visible Christianity right now, people have it backwards.

They think the person who stands on Scripture and says, this is sound doctrine, this is false teaching, that that fellow is the one causing divisions in the body of Christ. What does Scripture say? Who are the ones causing division?

It's the false teacher who's causing division. So always keep that in mind. It is not the sound teacher who is rebuking those who teach false doctrine who is causing division. It's the false teacher who is causing it.

So they are the ones who cause division. They are worldly people. Oh, yes they are. And notice what it says. They are devoid of the Spirit. That is a polite way of saying they're not even Christians. If you don't have the Spirit, you're not a Christian.

But you, beloved, building yourselves up in your most holy faith, keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life. Have mercy on those who doubt.

Save others by snatching them out of the fire. To others, show mercy with fear, hating even the garments stained by the flesh. So notice, our posture towards those who are being deceived by these people is to be one of love and mercy and desiring and finding every way possible to snatch them out of the fire and do so in a loving, merciful, kind way.

Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling, and we thank you, Lord, that you keep us from stumbling. We pray that you would continue to do so. To present you blameless before the presence of His glory with great joy.

To the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ, our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority before all time and now and forever. Amen. Now this is a great little epistle, quick read. You got the theme, you think false doctrine's a danger?

Yes, it is. And that's what it means to take God's name in vain. Now, some may argue, well, wait a second. You know, that Jude fellow, you know, we don't know much about him. Which of Jesus' real apostles, you know, the guys who hung out with him, talk this way?

Well, I would say that Peter would fit that bill, would he not? Let's take a look at 2 Peter. And watch the theme of this epistle. We can read it in 25 minutes, which is what we got. Yeah, we can do that.

Simon Peter, a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ. To those who obtained a faith of equal standing with ours, by the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ. What a great sentence. Have you ever been tempted to say, well, I'm not like Peter.

I'm not as amazing as he is. You'll note here that Peter says that your faith is on the same standing, same level as his own. Because you are trusting in the exact same Savior he trusts in. So to those who obtained a faith of equal standing with ours, by the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ.

What did Peter just call Jesus? God. Yeah, there you go. May grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus Christ our Lord. The Lord, his divine power, has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature.

Real quick, if you want to understand what it means to be a partaker of the divine nature, it's real simple. It happens every time we have the Lord's Supper here. We partake of the divine nature when we feast on the body and blood of Christ, in, with, and under the bread and the wine.

So that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire. For this very reason make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, virtue with knowledge, knowledge with self-control, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, brotherly affection with love.

For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. So you'll notice here that these virtues do not make you a Christian.

They are the supplements of your faith and help you to not be unfruitful as Christians. If you are the opposite of these things, you have no knowledge, you're ignorant, you have no self-control, rather than being steadfast, you're flighty, and you're not godly, you're ungodly, you have no brotherly affection, you're ornery and hateful, and you don't treat anybody with love or brotherly affection but quite the opposite, I would say that that would have a tendency to undermine your ability to effectively proclaim Jesus as Lord and Savior.

And that's his point. So whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he's blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins. Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to confirm your calling and election.

For if you practice these qualities, you will never fall. For in this way, there will be richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Therefore, I intend always to remind you of these qualities, though you know them and are established in the truth that you have.

I think it right, as long as I am in this body, to stir you up by way of reminder, since I know that the putting off of my body will be soon, as our Lord Jesus Christ made clear to me, and I will make every effort so that after my departure, you may be able at any time to recall these things.".

Peter knows he's about to die. It's coming. He knows he's about to die. And he's going to make sure that the Christians, after his death, are able to recall all of the important doctrines that he was teaching.

And he says,. For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. For when he received honor and glory from the Father, and the voice was born to him by the majestic glory, this is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased.

We ourselves heard this very voice born from heaven, for we were with him on the holy mountain. Does this sound familiar? This is the transfiguration of our Lord. I know people in the charismatic movement who would sell their mothers into slavery if they could just have an experience like that.

So we have, and notice what he says here now, We ourselves heard this very voice, we were with him on the holy mountain, and, or but, we have the prophetic word more fully confirmed, to which you will do well to pay attention as a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star arises.

Knowing this first of all, 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 Holy Spirit.

So this is what we know for sure. All of scripture, that which is truly the word of God, the one doing all the heavy lifting, is the Holy Spirit. So we can talk about the human authors, for sure they were human authors.

And you can even see they each have their own unique writing style, ways in which they spoke, and yet it was the Holy Spirit who carried them along to write these things down. And Peter is saying, I'm going to die, I had that amazing experience, but we have something even more sure than that, and the thing that we have is the Bible.

That's even more sure, so pay attention to it as a bright and shining light in the darkness. It continues. Now comes the theme that we've been working on. But, false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies.

Did you know the word heresy is a biblical word? There are people who literally think that it's not. I remember years ago, somebody in the emergent church said, yeah, that pirate Christian fellow, he's a heresy hunter.

And who gets to determine what a heresy is? He kind of said that kind of scoffingly. Well, I don't know, call me a simpleton if you like, but the word heresy is being used here in my Bible. This is a biblical category.