Daily Archive

False teachers are going to come in and are going to secretly bring in destructive heresies. They’re going to bring in doctrine that destroys. And what it is speaking of destroying here is the false teachers and those who listen to them. The destruction is the judgment and the wrath of God. This is not just church splits. This is not just factions. This is not just people getting their feelings hurt. This is people teaching things that are going to bring the judgment of God down upon them. God is going to hold them accountable. James 3:1 tells us, “Do not, many of you, become teachers, my brothers, knowing that we will receive a stricter judgment.”

When a false teacher says something that God disagrees with, that’s not just upsetting a crowd, that’s judgment, that’s wrath, that’s discipline, that’s destructive. And the word for heresies, the word appears a couple places in the Scripture and it’s not speaking of a specific set of doctrines here, like we usually use the term heresy, but it speaks to a sect or a faction. In fact a couple places it’s just used to describe the church or groups within the church.

1 Corinthians 11:19, this is the closest to how it’s used here in 2 Peter, “For there must also be factions among you, so that those who are approved may become evident among you.” It is the word faction, those who are bringing division, those who are forming their own little click, their own little group to praise their own teacher, to be a follower, to have that label, to have that recognition among men. But he says they’re breaking off and they’re forming these factions and these things are destructive. This is dogma that will destroy. It’s listed in the works of the flesh in Galatians 5:20, part of that list is “idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts, wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies.” These are works of the flesh, not the fruit of the Spirit.

False teachers are going to come in among you. And when they come in among you, he says, they’re even going to be denying the Lord who bought them, and bring on themselves swift destruction. Now there’s a question here, is he talking about actual saved people who have been redeemed by the Lord who rise up to be false teachers. I don’t think so, because when you look at the judgment that’s talked about these false teachers can’t have been saved. I think the best solution is to look at what they’re saying, because these false teachers are going to stand up, and they’re going to claim to be Christians. They’re going to claim to be following Christ and teaching the Word. They’re already, most of them, going to be recognized teachers within the church. Men and women who people are already listening to. But they’re going to secretly be bringing in these destructive doctrines, and as they do that, what you find out is the fruit that their teaching bears actually denies the Lord.

The word for deny there is actually to disown. They’re going to disown the Lord. How do you disown the Lord? Simply, you tell Him He’s not Lord. Now if you tell Jesus He’s not Lord, does that mean He’s not Lord? No. You don’t make Jesus Lord and you don’t make Jesus not Lord. God made Jesus Lord and He is Lord. The question is, are you obedient or not? And there’s the key. If you disown the Lord, you’re claiming to be His, but you’re not doing what He says. Jesus has a reply for that. Luke 6:46, “Now why do you call Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I say?”

We see here first, He says they’re coming in secretly. And the word secretly, it speaks to a malicious intent. Galatians 2:4 says this occurred “because of the false brothers secretly brought in, who had sneaked in to spy out our freedom which we have in Christ Jesus, in order to enslave us.” And in Jude 4, “For certain persons have crept in unnoticed, those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation, ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into sensuality and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.”

They creep in, they sneak in, they secretly come in. They’re not going to tell you at first who they are and what they actually believe. They’re going to win your affection first. They’re going to tell you what you want to hear. They’re going to appeal to your pride. They might even appeal to your desire to be pleasing to the Lord and tell you, “I’ll tell you how you can be pleasing to the Lord. Here’s what you need to do” and they’ll lay out a plan for you. It usually involves sending them money or buying their book. As they do this, be careful, test it against the Scripture because they’re doing this secretly. They’re not always blatant but their intent is always malicious and self -serving.

They’re not doing it to please the Lord. They’re doing it to please themselves. He also says they’re coming in with destructive ways. They’re coming in secretly with destructive ways. And that’s the Jude 4 reference. They’ve crept in unnoticed and they’ve been marked out for condemnation. They are ungodly men who turn the grace of God into lewdness and deny the Lord our God and our Lord Jesus Christ. He says they also come in and many follow them, and as a result, the way of truth is blasphemed. We know this lesson from Scripture, we know this lesson from the ministry of Christ Himself. A large crowd does not mean that God is pleased. Now, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t large churches with thousands of people where the truth is being preached. You go out other places and it might be a little church. That’s all right.

When the crowds followed Jesus and He quit feeding them, what’d they do? Well, they came anyway, didn’t they? No, they didn’t come back. They didn’t come back. God always seems to be working through the remnant, through the small things, through the little things. Why? Because then you understand it’s impossible.

If you see a big crowd of people running after something new, especially if somebody’s claiming that it’s something new, God revealed to them something that nobody’s ever taught before in the history of the church. Look, as soon as they say that, turn it off. They’re wrong. They’re lying to you. They’ve not discovered some secret that nobody else has seen in the history of the church.

False teachers are secretly, with malicious intent, bringing in destructive ways that many people want to hear. And Peter says they’re doing this by covetousness and they’re exploiting with deceptive words. You see the motive here for the false teacher is a motive of greed. These are the pastors and the preachers who focus on every empty seat instead of every filled one. Spurgeon said, why do we focus on the empty seats? If you focus on the empty seats, you’re not feeding sheep. Focus on the seats that are full. Those are the people that are there to hear from the Word of God. But we focus on the empty seats because you know every empty seat, that’s a dollar, that’s a building, that’s a budget. Something’s missing. Something’s not there. “We’re not big enough. We’re not growing fast enough. We’re not reaching enough people.” And of course, we’re all doing it for the sake of the gospel because we want to reach the whole world for the gospel, don’t we? Because we have so much to maintain in this movement of greed.

Later on here in 2 Peter 2 and verse 14, he says these false teachers “having eyes full of adultery and unceasing sin, enticing unstable souls, having a heart trained in greed—they are accursed children!” They are covetous. They are greedy. They always want more, and it’s all for them, and it’s licentiousness. He says they’re exploiting you with deceptive words. The word exploit, it’s a simple word. It means to engage in business. False teachers seek to make merchandise out of you.

It’s going to cost you something to get to the secret. It’s going to cost you something to find out the truth. Jesus tells us I’ve given you the gospel freely. We’ve received it freely, we give it freely. We don’t need to work the world’s ways and the world’s methods to do what we need to do. You see, we’ve fallen for a lie in the church because of our covetousness, because of our greed, because we’ve been exploited, because we’re making merchandise of ourselves and of the gospel, because we’ve listened to these deceptive words. We’ve believed that churches need big buildings and big programs and all of this stuff to attract people. If you have to have all of this stuff to attract lost people, then you’re attracting lost people and you may keep lost people, but you’re not attracting people to Christ.

Again, Lloyd-Jones said, there are those who are “Always comforting and never confronting.” They’re preaching not to confront in a way that will bring repentance or resolution, but they’re just smoothing it over, telling people it will be okay. We’ve got to come to Christ. We’ve got to be broken. You see, he doesn’t want us all smoothed out. He wants us broken. He wants us shattered. He wants us to have a contrite spirit. He wants us to understand that “Blessed of the poor in spirit.” The spiritually bankrupt. Those who know that in and of themselves they have nothing to bring.

“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. 2 And many will follow their sensuality, and because of them the way of the truth will be maligned. 3 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.”

Judgment is not sleeping. Their judgment has not been idle, their destruction does not slumber. Judgment will be swift and sure. God is going to judge. And while we should not rub our hands together and just wait for it, I also don’t think that it’s necessarily wrong to pray for God to go ahead and move in judgment. It’s what the martyred saints under the throne are asking. “Bring judgment. Avenge us.” And I’ll tell you, one of the greatest new songs the church will ever sing has already been recorded in Revelation 19. We’re going to sing about the fall of Babylon when it falls and we’re going to rejoice that the wicked have been judged because in judgment God will be glorified.

In the meantime, watch for false teachers. They’re here. They’ll be here so that when the truth is not being preached, you hear it and you recognize it. And trust the Spirit. Have you been in places before where you heard somebody preaching and you weren’t quite sure what was off, but the Spirit prompted you and you just know something’s just not right. Don’t ever discount that move of the Spirit. Let it drive you to the Word. Research it. Find out what wasn’t quite right. What might not have been right might be that you’ve not submitted to the truth yet. What might have not been right is that error was being preached. Check it out according to the Word of God and obey God rather than men.