How to spot a false teacher? (Part 1)

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ, based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the Apostle Paul said, �But we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.

In short, if you like smooth, watered-down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn�t for you. By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we�re called by the Divine Trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King.

Here�s our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry. My name is Mike Abendroth. What do I have for announcements? Well, you can listen to my brother, Pat Abendroth, on his new podcast, I don�t know, seven, eight episodes in, called The Pactum.

P-A-C-T-U-M. I�m going to have Pat on next week, and he can talk about that a little bit. I believe there�s a conference he�s going to have in October that�s going to be the Megger Conference, so we can talk about that as well.

I might know one of the speakers pretty well. I think I know his theology. Israel is on with Pat Abendroth of Bethlehem Bible Church, No Compromise Radio. That is February 23rd, 2022, so go ahead and email me.

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So order Sexual Fidelity, you get that one free. I think that is all I have for announcements. I did receive one of your emails. I think sometimes I bemoan the fact that I don�t get a lot of emails, but in fact I got a nice email today, or recently, from Daniel, and here�s what it says.

Pastor Mike�that�s Reverend, by the way�I wanted to reach out to let you know the show, and especially the pulpit ministry has challenged me to think biblically and grow in Christ, especially in law, gospel, and Reformed theology.

Exclamation. I�ve been listening for about four years. Where was you at for those first seven? When I was first exposed to your explanation of the law, gospel distinction, it was such an eye-opener, doctor.

I�m very thankful for God�s providence in directing my podcast listening and sermons throughout the week as a supplement to my local pastor�s preaching. We serve a gracious God. I wanted to encourage you and let you know that God has been using your ministry in challenging slash sanctifying me and my family.

Thank you for your faithful ministry in proclaiming Christ Jesus. It never gets old hearing about the glories of the personal work of Jesus and being reminded and reminding myself of these truths. In Christ, Daniel�he�s from Wisconsin, and then I like this part.

This is the fun part. 31 years old. I only put that in there in case you were curious in the age demographics of your listeners. I am because typically, Daniel, the age demographics are there 55 to 65-year-old white males.

How could that be? How could that be? I mean, come on. Don�t we need quotas or something? Don�t we need somebody telling us that we have to have the right amounts of people listening? Male, female, white, non-white, all that kind of stuff.

Crazy days. Well, I think that with your help today, Dear No Compromise Radio, if you put your hand out on, �Hey, we�re on Spotify. Hey, we�re on Amazon Alexa. Did you know that? If you say, �Hey, Alexa, listen to No Compromise Radio boom, that was my last announcement that I forgot about.

Both Spotify and Amazon we�re on now. Thanks, Spencer, for doing that. On No Compromise Radio today, I�d like to discuss the idea of not a fun thing, not the most favorite topic, but I want to talk about false teachers.

Why 2 Peter 2 Is a Warning Passage About False Teachers

Remember when the radio show, No Compromise Radio, was ranked right up there, top five broadcasts, when I would go after Beth Moore and Ann Voskamp and those kind of people? I don�t seem to do that anymore.

Somebody said, �Basically, you want more ratings, you have to talk about crazier things. But since I�ll never know what a rating is, I don�t really need to do that. Do we really want ratings? What I want to talk about is, as I said earlier, false teachers.

The reason why I�m going to talk about false teachers is I�m working through 2 Peter. I�ve come to the chapter that�s about false teachers, and that is chapter two. It�s off the charts. I don�t care if you�re reading it in the new literal legacy Bible, no comment, or you�re reading it in the original Greek language.

Lloyd-Jones said of 2 Peter 2, �Of all the chapters which are to be found in the entire Bible, this second chapter of the second epistle of Peter� listen now, it�s the most terrible, all right, is among the most terrible �for threatening, for warning, for the idea of doom and disaster and destruction, there is nowhere in holy writ itself anything which surpasses this particular chapter.

Now, that�s up there. I mean, maybe some kind of the castigation and excoriation of Jesus in Matthew 23, that might be up there, but I will allow Martyn Lloyd-Jones to do what I often do, and that is to have rhetorical, homiletical license.

I get the point. I know hyperbole, exaggeration exists in pulpits. Heno. By the way, what is Heno? What happened to Twitter? What happened to the Twitter Heno stuff? I have no idea. We�ve lost control of the Twitter universe that I stopped Twittering in January, to my wife�s praise.

Well, I don�t know if she�s praised me for it, but she�s thankful for it. Warning, warning, warning, warning. I don�t really know if that makes you happy or you�re just thankful. So if you hear some kind of warning, red alert, warning, broadcast network warning in the backyard once a month, our tornado warning siren would go off and all the neighbors would have to hear it that one Saturday a month for just testing for a couple minutes.

It�s no fun to hear a warning. It is jarring. It is discombobulating. It is mentally less than like a sauna. Ever been in a sauna? I was in a sauna the other day and I think I need to get myself a sauna.

Lloyd-Jones goes on to say, anyone who enjoys reading a chapter like this must surely be abnormal. It is a chapter which has much in it that is unsavory and unpleasant. And I say, left to one�s own choice and one�s own likes and dislikes, this is the kind of chapter that one would avoid.

That�s Martin Lloyd-Jones in his great commentary on 2 Peter published by Banner of Truth. I think it was his expository messages. And, you know, I don�t know, maybe I was going through like an uber-reformed little time period there that I didn�t really read much Lloyd-Jones.

And he�s not my homeboy. And he�s got some stuff like Ephesians 1, 13, 14, kind of kooky stuff. But if you read him on 2 Peter, you�re going to go, wow, that guy, that was really, really helpful for me to understand what the Lord wants me to think about 2 Peter.

While warnings might not be good, they serve a purpose. Yes? Yes. So, when I hear the siren go off and it�s a real tornado warning, get in your basement or you could be killed. While I don�t like the warning, I appreciate it.

So, today we�re going to think about appreciating the warning of 2 Peter chapter 2. If you understand the glories of Jesus, if you understand how great forgiveness is, if you understand that it�s easy to watch people, I mean, it�s not easy to watch, but I mean, it�s easy for them as we watch them seemingly to just distort the personal work of Jesus.

Why is Maddie, Maddie is my daughter. I�m going to do it right now. Well, Maddie, you don�t know this, but I�m live on No Compromise Radio and they can�t see you, but they could hear you. So, is there any way I could help you before I continue back with our show?

No, I just wanted to say hi. Oh, you did. Okay. Well, your glasses sure look great. Thank you. All right. I�ll FaceTime you back in about 20 minutes. Okay. Anything, I love you too. Anything you want to say to the No Compromise Radio Ministry worldwide national audience?

Um, no. Okay. Talk soon, pal. Bye. All right. She had a huge smile on her face. Oh, man. Um, so people distort Jesus pretty easily. Hard for us to watch. And we need to make sure that we just, maybe it�s unsavory, but we understand that this is in the Bible.

It�s good for us. It�s God�s Word for us. And even if you love, um, I don�t know, what�s your favorite chapter in the Bible? Psalm 23. Is that your favorite chapter? Is it 1 John 2? Is it Romans 8? Is it Galatians 2?

Whatever your favorite might be, if that�s even allowed, uh, this is good for us and profitable. It is profitable for you to know 2 Peter 2 as the writer, Peter, wants you to be able to identify false teachers.

That�s really the point, identifying false teachers. How can you discern, discern a false teacher? Uh, you�re going to need to. Uh, the Bible says there�s lots of them. Uh, that sometimes that there are heaps of them.

Having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions. There�s a lot of false teachers out there. Uh, and Paul said in Titus 1, whose mouths must be stopped, who subvert whole houses, teaching things they ought not for filthy lucre�s sake.

How do you like that little King James, little subverting whole houses? And it�s doing it for filthy lucre. First Timothy 6, if you like King James, here�s another one. Perverse disputings of men of corrupt minds and destitute of the truth, supposing that gain is godliness, from such withdraw yourself.

Technically, from such withdraw thyself. There�s a war going on and we need to know whose side we�re on and whose side other people are on. And the thing is, they�ve embedded themselves. Uh, and when you embed yourself, uh, you don�t know who�s good and who�s bad.

You know, that�s why I feel for some of these guys overseas, it�s not the war like we had in the old days where people had different uniforms on and if somebody had a different uniform, you shot at them.

Now everybody wants to blend in and, you know, it�s guerrilla warfare and it�s you don�t know who the good guys are and the bad guys. You do not false, uh, teacher spot or false teacher observe or false teacher notice by how people look, how they, uh, have lots of followers, uh, what�s their smile like.

What do you look at? How can you figure out what a false teacher is without being a total discernment ministry? Am I, is No Compromise Radio a discernment ministry? I actually, if you called it that, I wouldn�t like it.

I wouldn�t like it that you said, �Oh, you�re just a discernment ministry. And you just go around critiquing people. I, these days, I don�t really care about critiquing, again, the issues going on in the world, uh, with certain, I don�t know, if it�s even woke stuff, which I despise, uh, whether it�s women in ministry stuff with Beth Moore, which I despise.

Did you, I didn�t say she, I despise her. I said, which I despise. She espouses, but I despise that belief. I�m after more things like, how can we be so messed up on sanctification? How can we think that justifications, God�s work alone, monergistic, and then we just go, well, sanctification is what we do.

I thought God was the sanctifier. I�m more concerned about law gospel distinction. I�m more concerned about, uh, how to read the Bible in light of the spirit of God�s work in the last 2 ,000 years, et cetera.

So, that�s mainly what I�m after these days. It�s not, oh, but it is important for me as a pastor to tell people, don�t listen to that person. That person�s a false teacher, or at least what they said is false, and so be careful.

Six Descriptions of False Teachers in 2 Peter 2:1-3

So, if you go to 2 Peter, verses 1 to 3, he gives you six descriptions of false teachers designed so that you can see them easily, notice them, recognize them, spot them, and then run from them. Or I could say, simply believe the opposite that they do.

Peter starts off the book in chapter 1, he�s just laying down the foundation so the people that he�s shepherding, while persecuted, still have a good foundation, and they would understand the language of the gospel, right?

The hardest language in the world to understand, more than Navajo, more than Mandarin, more than Japanese, more than English. It is difficult to understand gospel language. Spurgeon said, �Salvation by Christ is so disagreeable to our carnal mind, so inconsistent with our love of human merit, that we never would take Christ to be our all in all, if the Spirit did not convince us that we were nothing at all, and did not so compel us to lay hold on Christ.

That�s really the first four verses. This is what God has done for His glory and for your good. And when you realize how great that is, you want to respond with reverence, awe, and as a Christian, virtue, moral excellence, and he goes on to list those things.

We understand that the law is relentless, the law is demanding, the law requires perfect righteousness, and it is not lax in any way, shape, or form. Therefore, we need a Savior who can live under that law and obey that law, and who can pay the penalty for our law-breaking.

But there�s something more that we need, and not that we need more than Jesus, but we need more than justification. There�s another grace of God. Calvin called it the two-fold grace of God, duplex gratia Dei.

Caspar Olivianus called it the double benefit, the duplex beneficium, and that is the one grace, justification, freely given by God. The other grace, sanctification, freely given by God. And that�s what he begins to talk about when chapter 1, verse 5 turns for this very recent type of thing.

God knows that while Christians are credited as righteous, there is new birth and there�s a life that the Christian lives in holiness. When we talk about progressive sanctification, I just want to make sure you remember that God is the sanctifier and that it is the work of the Spirit doing two things when it comes to sanctifying us.

The Spirit, He, the Holy Spirit, mortifies the flesh, puts to death the old man, and He vivifies the flesh, makes alive vivification, vivification and mortification. And this is what Peter calls divine power, conforming us to Christ, right?

That�s what the Spirit of God, that�s what He does. Who does it? Well, God does it, God�s grace. Does God do it alone? Is it God�s grace alone, God�s power alone? If you want to talk about certain terms, our works, our effort, our sweat, our toil, our good works, they are not technically sanctification, but they are what we would call consequences of sanctification.

They are called results of sanctification. Westminster Shorter Catechism, sanctification is the work of God�s free grace whereby we are renewed in the whole man after the image of God, that�s vivification, and enabled more and more to die into sin, live under righteousness.

There�s mortification, vivification, both right there. We are enabled, we are renewed. Our response, the consequence of that, we make every effort. I�m not saying Christians are antinomian, because that would fly in the face of all of 2 Peter.

2 Peter, you ought to run from antinomians. That�s what these people are saying. Jesus isn�t coming back. Live like hell. That�s what they�re saying. Live the way you please. There�s nobody over you. Who is this man?

He doesn�t reign over us. Unholy living, antinomian living, lawless living is the bane of Christianity. It�s wrong. Licentious living, no law living is awful. But I would submit to you and suggest to you that somehow saying we cooperate with God�s sanctification, that it is God�s grace and God�s power and our work and our merit and sweat that yields sanctification, I think you ought to be very, very careful.

I think you ought to say it�s God�s grace that sanctifies. It�s God�s power that sanctifies. It�s God�s grace alone that sanctifies. God�s power alone that sanctifies. That�s what sanctification is. And if you want to talk about consequences, if you want to talk about of good works, if you want to talk about results and those things, fine.

Then put sweat, toil, rigor involved there. There is an exertion. I understand that. But if the dual grace articulated by Calvin is true, justification and sanctification that we receive from union with Christ, well, we better be very careful not to diminish the work of Christ in our sanctification, right?

Sanctified by Christ�s Spirit or sanctified with Christ�s Spirit? That�s the question. Justification, sanctification, dual graces. Is that true? I think the answer is true. And then he goes on in 2 Peter 1 to talk a little bit about God�s Word, the apostles.

They hear from God. They tell us. We have the Old Testament. We can see that Jesus is going to come back based on that. And then he says in chapter 2, verse 1, but, and he�s going to condemn these false teachers.

I�ve got my foundation. I�ve got my fortification. I�m in the tower. I�m manning battle stations. I�m equipped. Justification, sanctification, vivification, mortification. But who do I shoot at? Well, here�s the enemy.

Here they are, chapter 2. He, via the Spirit of God, wants you to know who the enemy is. And by the way, they�re going to be destroyed. Destruction is sure. Over and over and over, there�s the discussion of the destruction of these enemies.

Now, we don�t have to destroy them, but they�re going to be destroyed. So, you need to know who the enemy is. Number one, what�s the first description of a false teacher? They�re sneaky. So, don�t be naive.

They�re sneaky. But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will also be false teachers among you who will secretly bring in destructive heresies. Stop there. They�re sneakers. They�re not saying, you know what, we�re false teachers and we�re on the Satan broadcast network.

We are false teachers and we�re coming to you in a movie that�s NC -17. We are going to be dammers of your soul. All right, when a false teacher shows up at your door, they�re usually coiffed and they�ve got deodorant on and all that other stuff.

I don�t get that close to them, so I wouldn�t really know, but you get my point. There were false teachers that arose among the people, false prophets, i .e. Israel, right? Satan used people to go behind the scenes with that whole deal in the nation, and so it shouldn�t surprise us that that�s what happens today.

They�re not in the world, although obviously they�re in the world, but in terms of Peter�s point here, they�re insiders. They�re in Israel. Not the Philistines, although the Philistines were false teachers, but watch out, these people are sneaking in.

They�re in the church. They might be in your church. So, what�s the point? Here�s my last point, and then it�s time to take a break and do part two. Whatever is preached on Sunday in your church from your pulpit, do you just automatically go, �That�s right.

My pastor said it. The denomination said it. I believe it. Is that enough? Really? And I know you�re no-compromise radio listeners, so that�s not how you do things, so let�s just be careful. Mike Abendroth, nocompromiseradio .com.

Email me, mike at nocompromiseradio .com. You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.