We also see empty promises through words of emptiness. He says in 2 Peter 2:17-18 , they are “These are springs without water and mists driven by a storm, for whom the black darkness has been kept. For speaking out arrogant words of vanity, they entice by sensual lusts of the flesh, those who barely escape from the ones who conducted themselves in error.” These are empty, futile, vain, arrogant words.

He points back to the pride of false teachers. Those who would say the church for 2 ,000 years has gotten this wrong, but I figured it out. Well, nobody believes that’s true. You can’t be that great of a student. I’ll tell you what, anybody who ever tells you if they found something new, ask them if they’ve read everything that John Owen wrote. By the time they finished reading him, they’ll know whether or not they found something new. We think that we’ve got it all together because we have all of this information at our fingertips. We don’t know anything.

But we think we found something new. So you know what the false teachers and the cultists, you know what they do then? Then they have to give an authority to their new message. So what do they do? They invent an event. And what is that event? Well, “An angel came, or God revealed, or the heavens opened up, or I found these plates.” There has to be some divine intervention that gives them this wisdom and this knowledge that is new and that is fresh and that corrects everybody who’s been wrong for 2 ,000 years.

What a slap that is to the character and ability of God to uphold his word in his church. To think that it’s been that wrong for that long. No, the church has been there, the remnant has been there, and the gospel has been there ever since the garden and even before. The gospel has been there. When God told Adam and Eve and the serpent that her Seed was going to crush the serpent’s head. There’s the gospel. There’s the gospel. Deliverance from the deceiver. It’s always been there.

But they speak these words of arrogance and of emptiness. Again, going back to Jude, Jude tells us this is going to happen. He says, “These are grumblers, finding fault, following after their own lusts; and their mouth speaks arrogantly, flattering people for the sake of their own benefit. But you, beloved, must remember the words that were spoken beforehand by the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ, that they were saying to you, ‘In the last time there will be mockers, following after their own ungodly lusts.’ These are the ones who cause divisions, worldly-minded, not having the Spirit.

These empty words are futile words. They’re frustrated words. This is somebody making a promise, but you never reach the goal. Somebody laying out a plan. And this is what it sounds like, “If you just do what I tell you to do. then God will do what I’m telling you God will do. So just go do it and have enough faith to do it.” Well then if it doesn’t happen, what happened? Either, “You didn’t do it like I told you to do it,” or “You didn’t have enough faith.” So let’s try again, let’s try something different. This time do this and they lay out a step.

Do this and do this and do this and it’s always, have you ever noticed in cults that when you get to one step, you know what you find out? That’s just the door to the next step and it costs a little more. Then it’s just the door to the next step and it just cost a little more. And there’s a little more investment. There’s a little more sacrifice until finally you either figure it out or it consumes you.

These are empty words. They’re frustrating words. You never reach the goal. You never get where you’re supposed to get. If you listen to the false teachers and you listen to their empty words and empty promises, you will never reach the goal. It is futile. This is the result of sin. Romans 8:20 tells us, “For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope.”

Acts 14:15, “Men, why are you doing these things? We are also men of the same nature as you, proclaiming the gospel to you that you should turn from these vain things to a living God, who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and all that is in them.” These idols are useless. They are futile things. And you need to turn from them to the living God who made the heaven, the earth, the sea, and all.

Here is where we misunderstand it. We hear somebody say the name of Jesus. And we think that they’re talking about Jesus. No, they may not be. If they’re defining him differently, as has been defined from the Scriptures and through the creeds in the early church where they for hundreds of years wrestled over how to define the person and the nature of who Jesus is and what Jesus is.

Why is that important? Because if you attribute to Jesus as characteristics that aren’t His, nature and ability that aren’t His, a personality that is not His, you’re not talking about THE Jesus. Jesus is who He has revealed Himself to be. And if you have a false Jesus, another Jesus, you’re worshipping an idol, something that’s futile. R .C. Sproul said this over and over again. He said the problem in the church today is that we worship an image of God made in our own minds instead of the image of God revealed in the Scripture through His Son, Jesus Christ. We make God in our image. We make a God whose chief characteristic is His niceness and His inability to do anything that would violate what I want in my life.

Listen, I would dare not ever tell God that there’s anything He can’t do when it comes to my life. I’m His. He’s brought me with His blood. We forget oftentimes our place as slaves in the kingdom, and we would dare to command our Master what He should do and could do and must do. This is the heart of false teaching. It makes an idol out of my own wants.

In 1 Peter 1:18-19, Peter reminds us we need to remember “knowing that you were not redeemed with corruptible things like silver or gold from your futile conduct inherited from your forefathers, but with precious blood, as of a lamb unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ.” Before Christ, we were living in futility, and if you follow false teachers, you’ll continue in that futility. You will be frustrated and you will never reach the goal.