11/30/08 Prophets True and False Pt. 2

We return this morning to our study of Peter’s second letter to the Body of Christ.

As we’ve seen in our study of the first chapter during most of the past year

Peter takes the first 11 verses of this letter

to share with us the message to his fellow Christians

that he most wants to leave behind him following his own death.

We spent literally months walking our way through those 11 verses,

and now we are continuing on with what he says in the rest of this letter.

And so far, in the last 10 verses of this first chapter

we’ve seen Peter offer us a strong defense of his own apostolic authority

and his divinely established right

to share the truths he’s sharing.

He then ends the chapter

with a clear, simple affirmation

of the absolute authority of Scripture over our lives,

and his assurance that it is, in fact,

not simply the ideas of men

but, in an utterly unique way,

the actual words of God Himself to us.

That’s where chapter one ends,

but it is certainly not where Peter’s letter to us ends

because the next thing he does

is to turn his attention to the false voices around us,

what he calls “false prophets”,

men and women who will always be present within the family of God,

men and women who deceive many,

and lead many astray.

And Peter writes the entire second chapter,

which amounts to a full third of his letter,

to help us recognize and avoid these false prophets.

Now, we’re going to take the time to read this entire second chapter together,

and then I’ll see if I can help us get a better grasp of his key points,

but before I read the passage

I just want to make one observation.

This letter was written by Peter

less than 40 years after the departure of Christ.

And yet what he describes here

is truly amazing.

We are going to hear him describe

a level of deception,

and a level of perversity

that rivals some of the worst of the twisted cults we see in our world today.

And what he describes

was prevalent enough at that point in church history

for Peter to invest one third of his final letter to the family of God

in trying to deal with what he saw taking place.

I think we can sometimes look back at the early years of the Church,

the New Testament era,

and see it as an ideal time,

a time of clarity, and purity, and power.

And certainly, after 2000 years of religious sewage swirling around the people of God,

we face a number of battles today that they knew nothing about.

But at the same time,

it is clear from Peter’s words to us

that even before his own death

Satan’s deceptive and destructive strategies

were deeply entrenched within the Body of Christ.

And if we’re familiar with our Lord’s parables

we shouldn’t really be surprised.

Remember that one about the wheat and the tares?

MAT 13:24-30 Jesus presented another parable to them, saying, "The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field. But while his men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat, and went away. But when the wheat sprouted and bore grain, then the tares became evident also. The slaves of the landowner came and said to him, 'Sir, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have tares?' And he said to them, 'An enemy has done this!' The slaves said to him, 'Do you want us, then, to go and gather them up?' But he said, 'No; for while you are gathering up the tares, you may uproot the wheat with them. 'Allow both to grow together until the harvest; and in the time of the harvest I will say to the reapers, "First gather up the tares and bind them in bundles to burn them up; but gather the wheat into my barn."'"

Fighting for purity within the family of God

is always a worthy cause.

But we should have no illusions about our potential for absolute success.

There has been deception and corruption

within the family of God

since earliest days of the Church’s existence,

and there will be until the day our King returns.

Of course the obvious reason for this

is because we are involved in a very real warfare

with a very real enemy

who is absolutely committed to the destruction of the redemptive work of God on this planet.

He is an enemy

who understands the church,

and the people of God,

and the message and life of God

better than any of us ever will,

and he knows how to exploit it.

But there are some other things

that strongly contribute to God’s people

being so vulnerable to these attacks.

For one thing,

we are among the few in our world

who have stopped running and hiding from our weaknesses and our needs.

In fact, with many of us,

it is our brokeness and our weakness that has drawn us to our Savior.

But it is that very honesty and openness about the broken areas of our lives

that can make us far more vulnerable

to those who use the organized church for their own twisted ends.

Why has it been so relatively easy

for religious leaders to sexually abuse those under their care?

Why do we far too often

hear of financial dishonesty within the church community?

Years ago Sandee and I were members of a group called “The Brotherhood News Letter”.

It was started by a pastor who wanted offer Christians

an alternative to conventional health insurance.

Several years after we joined

the news came out that this guy was taking thousands of dollars out of the organization

for his own extremely corrupt secret life.

Why are we so often such easy targets for such things?

At least in part

it’s because there is within the hearts of the people of God

a natural respect for and trust in

anyone who identifies himself or herself with Jesus Christ,

and certainly with anyone who holds a position of leadership within the Church.

If you can’t trust the moral integrity of your pastor or your priest,

who can you trust?

And then when you add to this

that deep hunger for growth in our relationship with our Lord

that God’s Spirit etches into the very core of the Christian’s life,

when someone says with the voice of authority,

“Follow me! I will show you the way into the deeper life,

into the deeper things of God.”,

we just naturally trust and follow.

And I have to tell you,

I really love what I hear Peter saying in this second chapter.

We will hear from him

an unguarded rage at those who abuse the Body of Christ,

a rage I think every growing Christian feels

whenever we hear about someone who has used their position of trust in the church community

for their own flesh-driven ends.

But let me read the chapter for us

and then we’ll look a little more closely at what Peter is saying.

2PE 2:1-22 But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will also be false teachers among you, who will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing swift destruction upon themselves. Many will follow their sensuality, and because of them the way of the truth will be maligned; and in their greed they will exploit you with false words; their judgment from long ago is not idle, and their destruction is not asleep.

For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to pits of darkness, reserved for judgment; and did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a preacher of righteousness, with seven others, when He brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly; and if He condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to destruction by reducing them to ashes, having made them an example to those who would live ungodly lives thereafter; and if He rescued righteous Lot, oppressed by the sensual conduct of unprincipled men (for by what he saw and heard that righteous man, while living among them, felt his righteous soul tormented day after day by their lawless deeds), then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from temptation, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment for the day of judgment, and especially those who indulge the flesh in its corrupt desires and despise authority. ¶ Daring, self-willed, they do not tremble when they revile angelic majesties,

2PE 2:11 whereas angels who are greater in might and power do not bring a reviling judgment against them before the Lord. But these, like unreasoning animals, born as creatures of instinct to be captured and killed, reviling where they have no knowledge, will in the destruction of those creatures also be destroyed, suffering wrong as the wages of doing wrong. They count it a pleasure to revel in the daytime. They are stains and blemishes, reveling in their deceptions, as they carouse with you, having eyes full of adultery that never cease from sin, enticing unstable souls, having a heart trained in greed, accursed children; forsaking the right way, they have gone astray, having followed the way of Balaam, the son of Beor, who loved the wages of unrighteousness; but he received a rebuke for his own transgression, for a mute donkey, speaking with a voice of a man, restrained the madness of the prophet.

These are springs without water and mists driven by a storm, for whom the black darkness has been reserved. For speaking out arrogant words of vanity they entice by fleshly desires, by sensuality, those who barely escape from the ones who live in error, promising them freedom while they themselves are slaves of corruption; for by what a man is overcome, by this he is enslaved. For if, after they have escaped the defilements of the world by the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and are overcome, the last state has become worse for them than the first. For it would be better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than having known it, to turn away from the holy commandment handed on to them. It has happened to them according to the true proverb, "A dog returns to its own vomit," and, "A sow, after washing, returns to wallowing in the mire."

OK, there’s a whole bunch of stuff in these 22 verses,

but some things are abundantly obvious

even in a single reading.

It is obvious that Peter wants us to not be naive

about the presence of false prophets within the church

or about their potential to cause tremendous damage in the lives of those who come under their influence.

And Peter’s anger against them,

and his disgust of them,

and his eager anticipation of God’s judgement of them is also obvious.

How dare they do what they do to God’s people!

Above all else

the one thing a person should know

and should experience

when he or she enters the family of God

is that here at least they are safe.

What happens within the Body of Christ

should mirror what happens between us and God Himself

when we come to Him through Christ.

It should be the one place in all the world

where no one attacks us,

no one targets us,

no one uses us for their own ends,

no one is trying to cheat us or get money from us for their own ends,

and certainly no one is ever trying to use us for their own sexual pleasure.

And yet all of those things

are far too common within the world of organized religion.

This morning

in more than a few churches throughout our nation

God’s people will be subjected to guilt and fear manipulation

in an attempt to achieve the success or ego goals of the guy up front.

And the kind of things that Peter’s talking about here

are far worse than that.

You probably noticed that Peter relies heavily

upon examples and illustrations from Israel’s history

in his attempts to communicate what he wants us to know.

In these 22 verses

he made direct reference to angels who rebelled,

to the ancient world before the flood, (Gen. 6:1-8)

to Noah, (Gen. chapters 6-9)

to Sodom and Gomorrah, (Gen. 18:20-19:28)

to Lot, (Gen. 18:20-19:28)

to Balaam, (Numbers chapter 22)

and to Balaam’s donkey (Numbers chapter 22).

If you’re not acquainted with those events

I’ve given you the references in the notes

and I encourage you to read them on your own.

I guarantee you’ll find them fascinating.

But the major thing he wants us to see through these references

is the message he gives us in verse 2:9,

...then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from temptation, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment for the day of judgment...

And both of those are truths we urgently need to know.

We need to know that we are not victims of our flesh,

or that the Devil really can make us do it.

We need to know that it is not the force of the attacks against us

or within us

that have the power to determine our future,

or our choices,

or the outcome of our lives.

It is our God.

And ...the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from temptation...

And it’s also good to know

that He also has his perfect ways

of dealing with those who attack the people of God for their own selfish ends.

The story isn’t over yet,

and when it is, God Himself will make sure the truth is revealed

and He will make certain all the scales are balanced correctly.

But that isn’t the what I found most fascinating about this second chapter.

What I found most interesting

is the way in which Peter prepares us to recognize false prophets in our midst.

He does the most fascinating thing.

He does not tell us to look at the doctrine of these men and women,

he tells us to look at their lives.

We have been so conditioned within the modern church

to focus primarily on a person’s doctrine - the belief system they teach.

We are assured that if their words sound right

we can trust their lives.

But Peter seems to indicate that we have that whole thing backwards.

Rather than looking at their words

to see if we can trust their life,

he tells us to look at their life

to see if we should trust them and follow them.

If we come in contact with a person

whose life is lived with deep compassion

and unquestioned moral integrity

then we should listen to their words,

their doctrines,

because their life illustrates the truth and value of what they believe.

But if their life isn’t working well,

if their relationships are in turmoil,

if there are passion-driven relationships,

or evidence of sexual immorality,

or greed,

or a defiant attitude toward human authority structures,

or if we discover that who they are in private

is very different from who they are up front, on stage, in public,

it doesn’t matter how good their words may sound,

or how skillfully they communicate them,

Peter warns us to beware and stay away!!

This is what Peter tells us

as he describes these men and women.

And he wants us to know

that we should never judge our leaders by majority vote -

by how many people follow their lead because...

2PE 2:2 Many will follow their sensuality...

2PE 2:3 and in their greed they will exploit you with false words...

He goes to great lengths to alert us to two major danger signs -

2PE 2:10 ... especially those who indulge the flesh in its corrupt desires and despise authority...,

warning us that they have...

2PE 2:14 ... eyes full of adultery that never cease from sin, enticing unstable souls, having a heart trained in greed, accursed children;

2PE 2:19 promising them freedom while they themselves are slaves of corruption...

Does that mean everyone within the family of God whose life is troubled is a false prophet?

NO! Absolutely not.

The truth is that we all begin our walk with the King

with some areas of our lives profoundly messed up.

And we all have chronic areas of weakness and vulnerability

that we may wrestle with our entire lives.

But the typical and healthy pattern for us

during those times when we are wrestling with some issue in our lives

or find ourselves temporarily defeated by some attack

is that we step back out of public view while we seek our Lord’s healing and victory,

knowing that we have no basis for trying to reach into someone else’s life

until our own foundation is established.

Early in my Christian life,

when I was still in school,

there was a powerful collegiate Bible teacher

who had a significant role in my own early training.

Several years later I heard that he’d stopped all public teaching.

He had run into some struggles in his own life

that he knew at least temporarily disqualified him from public leadership

and he walked away from all of it

until those issues were resolved.

Was he a “false prophet”?

Of course not.

In fact he was exactly the opposite,

recognizing that he had no right to teach anything that wasn’t clearly illustrated by his own life.

Typically the pattern is

that when our own life is troubled

God’s Spirit gives us the wisdom to keep quiet.

But those who are a danger within the Body of Christ,

and the ones that Peter is warning us about,

are the ones who will become more vocal,

more authoritative in the face of the turmoil and corruption in their own lives.

And they will skillfully use their words

to do one of two things.

Either they will justify their actions,

carefully or skillfully explaining to others

how their actions, their behavior is in every way consistent with the glorious GRACE of God,

...promising them freedom while they themselves are slaves of corruption,

or they will use their words to create a shiny public image,

a wonderful Christian facade

that allows them to hide their own immorality behind the facade.

Either way

the results of their words and their lives is the same - 2PE 2:17 These are springs without water and mists driven by a storm, for whom the black darkness has been reserved.

What they promise - the freedom they so boldly proclaim

they will never deliver.

And Peter’s words even seem to indicate

that once they have given themselves over to deception

they will loose their ability to see and respond to the truth.

They become so immersed in the defense and protection and proclamation of their own beliefs

that they can hear nothing else.

Recognizing they are wrong is simply not an option.

They have way too much invested in protecting their hiding place for their own ends.

So where does that leave us?

Well, clearly Peter does not want us to be naive or gullible.

And he certainly doesn’t want us trotting after every authoritative voice in the church world

simply because their words sound so good.

He does want us to look as closely as we can

at the lives of those who seek influence over us.

And if we can’t see their lives,

we should be very cautious about supporting their lives

or following their leadership.

And if they want money from us

we should look as closely as possible at how they spend it.

In His personal education program for me during my early Christian years

my Lord placed me at one time or another within the inner circles

of an incredibly broad spectrum of different church groups and organizations.

During those years

I worked with everything from Catholic nuns

to church groups in which it was regular stuff

for people to role around on the floor, writhing and twitching under the power of the “Spirit of God”.

And one of the most disturbing but crucial lessons I learned during those years

was that there is frequently a huge difference between who people are up front

and who they are in private,

or between who they are on Sunday morning

and who they are on Monday morning.

And by far the most important thing,

and the thing I can trust absolutely

is who they are in private

and who they are on Monday morning.

And if those two don’t line up,

no matter how good they may sound on Sunday morning,

or how many thousands my sing their praises,

we should run like the wind.

Well, with that we’ll leave Peter’s warnings to us

and next week move on to the third chapter of his letter.