Peter goes on in 2 Peter 2:14, not only that they are enticing unstable souls, but he says, “Having a heart trained in greed—they are accursed children.” This is the same word again, a specific word. They are trained experts in greed. That means they work hard to get good at something, just like an athlete training to win a race. What is it that false teachers train hard at? To manipulate people through their greed. It’s based on their greed, but that’s what they’re doing. They’re trying to lure you by your greed to give them what they want, which is your adoration, your attention, and your money. They are experts. They are trained. They work hard to get good at operating at this level. When we see it says to their accursed children, literally, they are children of the curse.

Ephesians 2:3 says, “Among whom we all also formerly conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, doing the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.” You see, we need a new nature. We need to become a new creation, and that’s only accomplished by the application of the Spirit.

So here they are. They’re living for pleasure. They’re blots and blemishes. They cannot cease from sin, having eyes full of adultery. They seduce the unstable, and they are experts in greed. Now, they never look this ugly on the big screen, do they? They polish it up. They’ve got a big smile with shiny teeth. There is the appeal. Look at the glitz. Look at the glamour. Look at the polished people who are leading this church. Wouldn’t you like to belong to a bunch of people that look like this, that live like this?

The church is not a religious country club. That’s not the church. It might be a religious society, but it’s a false religion. Because it’s not about dressing up the outside and impressing one another, it’s not about doing all of these things for pleasure and greed, out of ignorance and for immorality. But we read this and we do kind of shudder at these things and we think, how awful this must look. Well, you know how this looks? This looks wonderful because it’s packaged to appeal to our flesh. Oh, if only you had a pastor as pretty as the church down the street. If only you had a life like the neighbors down the street. It’s all covetousness and greed. The question is, as He calls them children of the curse, the question is, why are you coming to Jesus? Why are you coming to Him?

Are you coming to Him because you think He needs you? Are you coming to Him so that your life will be easier or better, so that you’ll improve financially or in your relationships? Or are you fleeing to Jesus because you’ve come to see that you’re a child of the curse and it’s only at the foot of the cross that that burden is lifted? There is no conviction in preaching today. You look at Pilgrims’ progress, you look at Christian coming with his burden to the foot of the cross and the burden falls off of his back and off of his shoulders. We have people walking around today with a full burden pack on who think they’re headed for glory in heaven. They’ll never fit through the narrow gate. There’s no way that they’re going to make it because they’ve never been first convicted of their sin.

They don’t know even what their real need is. Our need is not to die and go to heaven. Our need is to be saved from the wrath of God, to have that burden removed. Well, here there is no burden. The only burden you bear under the doctrine of the false teachers is that this week you just didn’t have enough faith. Everything would have been better if you just had more faith. Well, Jesus told the disciples they had a little faith. He told them that quite often, didn’t He? Oh, you have little faith. But then again, thankfully, He also says in His word, if you just have the faith the size of a mustard seed, you see faith placed in the right person.

It’s not a matter of amount, it’s a matter of the object of that faith. Who are you believing? Who are you trusting? Who are you serving? If you are serving yourself and if you think you’re believing Him to get what you want, it’s backwards. We come to Him because there is the only place that we can go and have the curse lifted.

He tells them there’s an example, “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 lawlessness, for a mute donkey, speaking out with a voice of a man, restrained the madness of the prophet.” They’ve gone astray after the way of Balaam. You remember the story? Balak and Moab are watching the children of Israel about to come over and conquer the Promised Land. And Balak is really not too thrilled about that, so he calls for a prophet named Balaam, and not necessarily a prophet of the Lord. In fact, he’s put to death later in the Scriptures for being a false prophet. But when he comes, Balaam says, “I want you to curse Israel before they come over here and do things to us. I want you to say horrible things about them, bring a curse down upon them.”

And so Balaam says, “All right, pay me and I’ll do whatever. I’ll say whatever, just pay me.” There’s the false teacher. Pay me and I will tell you whatever you want to hear. And then the Lord picked Balaam up by the scruff of the neck and said, you better not. I bless these people. I’ll give you the word to say. And you say the word that I tell you to say. What’s amazing here is as we look at the prophet Balaam and we see what he does, he’s going to bless them instead of curse them.

Deuteronomy 11:26-28 says, “See, I am setting before you today a blessing and a curse: the blessing, if you listen to the commandments of Yahweh your God, which I am commanding you today; and the curse, if you do not listen to the commandments of Yahweh your God, but turn aside from the way which I am commanding you today, by walking after other gods which you have not known.” There’s a promise, if you’re obedient, you’re blessed. If you’re disobedient, there’s going to be a curse.

Balaam now is being given an opportunity. Speak the word of the Lord or don’t speak at all. So he goes out, contrary to Balak, and blesses Israel. And in these four blessings, in these four prophecies, what is amazing is that even in the prophecies, we know in Numbers 24:17, there’s even the prophecy there of the star that was going to lead the wise men to the birth of the Messiah who was born in Israel. Balaam prophesied that, not because he was a godly prophet because he said what God told him to say. And this is what God was promising his people, a promised land and the fulfillment of the promised land is the promised savior.

Well, Balak really did not like the fact that Balaam blessed them instead of cursed them. So there was a little bit of a disagreement there. So Balaam decided to get on his donkey and go take a ride and on the way there curse Israel. Not only was the donkey not too thrilled, but we know why the donkey wasn’t too thrilled because as he got on the donkey and got on his way, it says the angel of the Lord stood before him with his sword drawn. And Balaam didn’t even know he was there. Donkey did, donkey stopped. “Donkey, get up.” Donkey wouldn’t go, ran and leaned into the wall, crushed his foot, sat down. “I’m not going.” Balaam is beating the donkey at this point. And all of a sudden the donkey turns around and says, “Knock it off!” Speaks to him in a man’s voice. How bad is it when a dumb donkey has to be no longer dumb? Where did we start? We started with irrational animals meant to be destroyed and here’s the false teacher being instructed in the way of life from a donkey speaking with a man’s voice.

And then God opens Balaam’s eyes and he sees the angel of the Lord standing in front of him with his sword drawn. How often is it that we face imminent doom and are absolutely ignorant? We need a few dumb donkeys in our lives, don’t we? People to come alongside and warn us. Now don’t take that metaphor too far. Who’s speaking the word of God to you, that dumb donkey? But we do. We need those unexpected things to happen, God’s word to come from unexpected places.

This doesn’t make Balaam a godly prophet by any way. In fact, in Joshua 13:22, “The sons of Israel also killed Balaam the son of Beor, the diviner, with the sword among the rest of their slain.” And then there’s a story that’s told over and over and over again throughout the history of Israel about Balaam to the point that when you get to the church at Pergamos, the church of compromise in Revelation chapter 2, Jesus says to the church at Pergamum, “I have a few things against you, that you have there some who hold the teaching of Balaam, who kept teaching Balak to put a stumbling block before the sons of Israel, to eat things sacrificed to idols and to commit sexual immorality.”

Because you remember, you remember what Balaam did finally, is he went to Balak and he said, I had to bless them. My hands were tied, God said bless them, I had to bless them. But, Balak, if you lure the men of Israel away to chase after the daughters of Midian, they’ll lead them into the worst sins before God. And then because of what God has said, He will curse His people. And you know what Balak did? He sent those Midianite women out there to seduce Israel and you know what happened? It worked.

This is what Peter’s talking about. Those who come and sometimes their words sound right, sometimes their words have come straight from the Lord, it seems. But what’s motivating them? First, I want to be paid and second, I want to teach you how to entice and manipulate and abuse other unstable souls. And this is the vicious cycle of false teaching.

When we look at Balaam and his donkey, when we look at the number of times that we have fought against the restraints that God has placed around us to keep us safe, we always have to remember the angel of the Lord standing there with his sword drawn. We have to understand that what we do, the way we live, the things we listen to, they have implications for life. In Hebrews 12, starting at verse five, the writer says, “And you have forgotten the exhortation which is addressed to you as sons, ‘My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord.’” Now I will tell you this, the angel of the Lord standing in front of you, the drawn sword, that’s a little beyond chastening. So this is when we’re glad that we are children and that we do face chastening from the Lord because it’s there to prevent us from running after error and false teaching.

He says, “Nor faint when you are reproved by Him; For those whom the Lord loves He disciplines, and He flogs every son whom He receives.” It is for discipline that you endure; God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom his father does not discipline? But if you are without discipline, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. Furthermore, we had earthly fathers to discipline us, and we respected them. Shall we not much rather be subject to the Father of spirits, and live? For they disciplined us for a short time as seemed best to them, but He disciplines us for our benefit, so that we may share His holiness. And all discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful, but to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness.”

You see, the training program for the false teachers is a training to be experts in greed and manipulation, to be so practiced at immorality that it doesn’t even look or sound immoral anymore, to entice unstable souls. The practice that we are to do is that practice yielding to the disciplining hand of the Lord, being taught, being chastened, being broken, so that we might be trained in righteousness to go the right way.

How are you going to be trained this week? The world is going to try to desensitize you, the world is going to try to train you to sin, the world is going to try to tell you that it’s okay, and they’re appealing to your flesh and they’re telling your flesh exactly what it wants to hear, so be on your guard. Train yourselves in righteousness, be renewing your mind in the Word of God. I love it, a quote from Paul Washer. He said, so often it seems that we send our children to hours and hours and hours of indoctrination and schooling and training, and then someday we bring them to Sunday school so they can color a picture of Noah’s ark, and we think that will suffice in guarding their minds against all that allures them away to trap them and ensnare them in the sin of the world.

It’s all around us, we know that it’s there. As we recognize it, we have to stand for righteousness. We have to be trained in it. We have to be disciplined in it, because these false teachers are there, and in their ignorance and in their immorality, they have found a way to entice unstable souls. That means then we must have our feet firmly planted on the truth, standing on the Word of God, believing His promises, being obedient to what He tells us to do. That’s our only hope against false teachers.

And even then we confess the false teacher that we really usually most need to be concerned about. It’s our own mind and heart, isn’t it? Telling us what we want to hear to lead us astray. Thankfully, He’s given us a new heart and a new mind and we’re a new creation. So continue being renewed. Continue being transformed. Walk that daily walk of denying yourself taking up your cross and following Him. Follow Him.