Grow In Discernment

Would you open your Bible to 2 Peter chapter 2?

2 Peter 2 · chapter mention

2 Peter chapter 2, as you're finding your way there in your Bible, I just want to tell you I'm glad that you're here today.

2 Peter 2 · chapter mention

It brings me joy to see your face, and I miss you when you're not here.

And I think it's a wonderful thing that God did when He put us together in this community called the Church.

And uh and I hope that you find some of your closest friendships with the people in this room because we're gonna spend eternity together, and uh we might as well start enjoying it now.

If you have your Bible there in front of you, we're in chapter two, and we're gonna read the last portion of the chapter.

We've already covered verses one through nine, and so we'll pick up there in verse nine and read through the end of the chapter.

It says, The Lord knows how to deliver the godly out of temptations and to reserve the unjust unto the day of judgment to be punished.

But chiefly them that walk after the flesh in the lust of uncleanness, and despise government.

Presumptuous are they, self-willed.

They are not afraid to speak evil of dignities.

Whereas angels, which are greater in power and might, bring not railing accusation against them before the Lord.

But these, as natural brute beasts, may to be taken and destroyed, speak evil of the things that they understand not, and shall utterly perish in their own corruption, and shall receive the reward of unrighteousness, as they that count it pleasure to riot in daytime, spots they are and blemishes, sporting themselves with their own deceivings while they feast with you, having eyes full of adultery that cannot cease from sin, beguiling unstable souls, and heart they have exercised with covetous practice, cursed children, which have forsaken the right way, and are gone astray following the way of Balam, the son of Bozer, who loved the wages of unrighteousness, but was rebuked for his iniquity.

The dumb ass speaking with man's voice forbade the madness of the prophet.

These are wells without water, clouds that are carried with a tempest, to whom the mist of darkness is reserved forever.

For when they speak great swelling words of vanity, they allure through the lust of the flesh, through much wantonness, those that were clean escape from them who live in error.

While they promise liberty, they themselves are the servants of corruption, for of whom a man is overcome, of the same he is brought in bondage.

For if after they have escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled therein and overcome.

The latter end is worse with them than the beginning.

For it had been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness than after they have known it to turn from the holy commandment delivered unto them.

But it is happened unto them according to the true proverb.

The dog is turned to his own vomit again, and the sow that was washed to her wallowing in the mire.

Let's pray.

Lord, we know that uh it transcends centuries and cultures and languages.

And I just pray and ask, Lord, that you would lead us through your Holy Spirit to understand the authorial intent of this text and to make the application to where we are today.

God, I just pray and ask that you'd help us to grow in discernment, to realize that not everybody who claims to speak for you is speaking for you.

And that if we get duped by damnable heresy, then we are going to suffer some eternal consequences.

And so, God, I pray that you would help us, Lord, to grow in this area of discernment through this text of Scripture in Jesus' name.

Amen.

I would remind you that Peter's expressed goal for this entire letter is that believers would grow.

2 Peter 3.18, he says, but grow in the grace and the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

So as we come to this text, we come to this book, this entire letter, we know that his desire is for us to grow.

Roy Hilton wrote in his commentary on 2 Peter, these Christians would have to be strong in the faith if they were to be successful in withstanding outside pressures.

Peter suggests throughout the entire epistle that the only way for a person to win the victory over these evils, listen, is constantly growing in grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

And so the idea is that we need to be perpetually growing, always growing, always pursuing grace or growing in Christ is not just learning more about Jesus and what he taught.

I would say it also includes learning what is not of Christ.

And that's where we find ourselves in this text of Scripture.

If you remember, in chapter 1, Peter taught us what is real, and in chapter 2, he teaches us what is counterfeit.

He teaches us the reality of Christ and the true characteristics of Christians.

And then in chapter 2, he transitions and he makes us aware that there are false teachers and there are false teachings.

And so he wants us to be aware that there are some impostors that we are going to encounter as we're attempting to follow Christ and to grow in him.

And so in verses 1 through 3 of chapter 2, he makes us aware.

Be aware, there's false teachers and false teachings.

And then in verses 3 through 9, he wanted us to grow in our understanding that there are eternal consequences that we face if we follow these false teachers.

And so he reminded us about the judgment of God, that the same God who saves is the same God who judges, and that he has to judge sin and he saves those who repent and believe.

Now in verses 10 through 22, he equips his readers to discern what is right and what is wrong.

And he does this by establishing biblical precedents and observable characteristics of these false teachers and their teachings.

Discernment is more than just being able to see something that is obviously right and wrong.

Discernment is being able to see if something seems to be heading in the wrong direction.

Right?

Two points that start very close together can end up very far apart if they are set on different coordinances.

And discernment is that ability to say, listen, I see how this is close in the beginning, but I also see that it can grow very far apart.

And so when we think about what Peter is doing here, he wants us to grow in discernment.

And discernment, I would say, is the interpretation of data through keen observation, critical thinking, and biblical knowledge.

You say, okay, how do you achieve being able to discern if something is going in the right direction or wrong direction?

For philosophy is right or wrong, or godly or ungodly.

Well, first we need keen observation.

We need to look at it.

We need to pay attention.

We need to stop being distracted by all the entertainments in life and actually lock in for a minute.

And then we need critical thinking.

You and I need to be critical thinkers.

That is, we need to put stuff to the test.

We can't just accept things at face value.

Somebody who comes across our social media feed claiming to give you Bible knowledge or speak for God.

You and I need to be critical thinkers.

We need to process that.

And what we need to, and I say critical, I'm not talking about the critique who is always finding some fault with everybody.

I'm talking about putting it to the test.

And that's why we need that third component, which is biblical knowledge.

That needs to be the comparison.

That needs to be the filter.

We need to have enough biblical knowledge that we can hear and listen to something and say, wait a minute, that kind of sounds right, but there's something that is off about that.

And so how do you spot these false teachers?

Right?

You say, okay, I need to grow on discernment.

Discement helps me do this, but how do I spot them?

What are the telltale signs to look for?

And I would just point you to the example of banks and how they teach their employees to spot counterfeit money.

Do you know they teach them not by starting with the counterfeit, they teach them by starting with the real, genuine currency.

By familiarizing them with the genuine currency and getting to know the real thing.

That's where it begins.

They want them to become so familiar with what is real currency, that is the foundation.

And then I found the protocol sometime back on how they check those.

And so, with that knowledge about the genuine article, the protocol for discerning counterfeit bills is touch, tilt, look through, and look at.

And so quickly, touch it.

It's a certain kind of paper and ink, and it has a certain feel to it, and so they say, touch it.

And then you tilt it, and it just gives you a different angle of perspective to see things, imperfections.

And then you look through it, and currency has this strand that runs through it that you can see.

And then you look at it.

You just start looking at all the details to make sure that they line up.

But understand, none of that would work if they didn't know what the real one looked like.

If they didn't know what the real one felt like.

And so, in the same way, Peter teaches us what is real Christianity in chapter 1.

And then in chapter 2, he begins to teach us what is counterfeit and what is not real and what is fake.

And the checklist that he gives to us is not touch, tilt, look through, and look at, but he gives us characteristics, he gives us comparables, and he gives us contradictions.

And so, number one, they uh the characteristics of false teachers.

What are those characteristics that they have?

Well, the characteristics are given to us in verse 1.

They walk according to the flesh, is what it says.

Hey, watch out, they walk according to the flesh.

Walk means your mode of operation or your manner of life, and flesh means unregenerate nature.

And so, in other words, look at how they live and how they act.

It's not just what they are saying, it is how are they living?

Is what they are saying matching with how they're living?

Does their walk match their talk?

And so, when you're trying to sort out, is this real or is this a counterfeit, begin by looking at the characteristics.

Are they walking according to the flesh?

Peter uses something that is called parallelism in his writing here in verse 10.

Parallelism is used quite a bit in the Proverbs and some in the Psalms, but it is when you have two statements or two sentences that parallel each other, the second is a restatement of the first.

And so the parallel statement to walk according to the flesh that we find here in verse 10 says that they are presumptuous.

So that characteristic, walking according to the flesh, is also manifested as presumptuous.

Presumptuous means to be, to assume to be right in the absence or ignorance of proof to the contrary, and to go too far in taking liberties, right?

A presumptuous person assumes that they are right, sometimes to the ignoring of evidence to the contrary, and then they take it and they go too far with the liberty.

And so this characteristic we see here is that they are walking according to their unregenerate nature.

And then it goes on to say they lust after uncleanness.

Here's another characteristic.

They lust after uncleanness.

Lust means desires or cravings, and uncleanness means sin or immorality.

And so these people have these desires and these cravings for these things that are immoral or sinful.

And so another characteristic to look for is whether they desire the things of God or do they desire the things of the world?

Do they resist selfish desires?

And listen, I'm not saying that a saved person doesn't have any fleshly desires because we are housed in this body of the flesh, and we are going to have those same temptations of our flesh that come.

The difference is when we have the Holy Spirit of God living inside of us, we put up some resistance to it.

We are not just chasing after it.

We're not pursuing, we're not indulging our sinful, selfish desires.

The parallel that Peter uses with this is self-willed, which means self-pleasing.

They lust after uncleanness.

They are self-willed.

They are self-pleasing.

They are not doing what God wants them to do.

They are doing what they want to do.

They're pursuing what pleases them.

I notice that the Apostle Paul included this on the list for the qualifications for a pastor in Titus 1.7.

Listen to what he said.

He said, for a bishop must be blameless as the steward of God, not self-willed.

Not self-willed.

I say, okay, that's just for you, preacher.

You're the bishop, and so I can be self-willed.

No, no, no.

Here Peter says that that is this characteristic of those false teachings.

It teaches you that you can do what you want after all.

You're forgiven and there is grace.

I pointed out that mention of being not self-willed in Titus because apparently this is an observable trait.

We can tell if somebody is self-willed, and we should not allow them to have influence over us.

You know that's what you do when you choose a church and you choose a pastor, you're saying, I'm gonna let that guy have influence on me.

I'm gonna let that guy tell me what the Bible says.

You better make sure that that guy is sticking with the book, that that guy is not living a double life, that that guy is not showing these characteristics of some sort of false teacher.

And then it says they dislike authority over them.

So they walk according to the flesh, they lust after uncleanness, and they don't like authority over them.

It said despise governments.

That word despise means to think little of, to think nothing of, or to disdain, and the word government refers to authority or more specifically lordship.

I I would say this the one thing that false teaching rejects more than anything else is the Lordship of Jesus Christ.

More than anything else.

I mean, they will claim that Jesus is the Savior, they'll claim that Jesus is the Son of God, they'll claim that Jesus does all these wonderful things, but they resist the Lordship of Jesus Christ.

They despise that He would have authority over them.

They want a soft, mushy Jesus that they can mold into their own proclivities.

A Jesus that is okay with whatever sinful and selfish thing that they want to do.

They do not want to give Jesus executive authority over their life.

You understand, executive authority means he has the right to veto.

He has the right to unilaterally decide what you will do and what you will not do.

And they don't want that.

They want to be in charge of their life.

The parallel to this is speaking evil of dignities.

And once again, Peter and Jude overlap on this subject.

Jude said, likewise, also these filthy dreamers defile the flesh, despise dominion, and speak evil of dignities.

And so this is a common characteristic among these false teachers and false teaching.

It is to downplay the authority and lordship of Jesus Christ.

And then after pointing out the characteristics of these false teachers, Peter goes on to give us some examples to compare them to.

And now he moves into this next step where he says, Let me give you some comparables.

Let me give you some things to compare them to.

And so let's look at the comparables of these false teachers here in verses 12 through 18.

First, it says they're like natural brute beasts in that they pursue their base desires like a stubborn animal destitute of reason.

That's what he says they're like.

They're like the the mule that won't be reined in by its owner, but instead decides it's going back to the barn, right?

Maybe some of y'all uh had some experience with that.

Uh to be honest with you, I never farmed with mules, though I grew up in West Virginia.

I never farmed with mules, but I did play in a couple of donkey basketball games when I was in high school.

And I learned some invaluable lessons about donkeys.

Do you all remember that trend we had back in the 90s when somebody brings about, you know, 12 donkeys to your school and you would have this fundraiser and you just you made a fool of yourself on the back of this donkey.

And so the rule was you had to be sitting on the donkey in order to shoot a shot that would count.

The problem was getting the donkey down the court close enough for you to shoot it.

And those brute beasts, if they decided they didn't want to go anywhere, would just stubbornly stop and plant themselves.

And so Peter says, listen, these teachers are like brute beasts.

They are just pursuing their base desires and they will not be reigned in.

And then he goes on to say that they are like spots and blemishes.

And those spots and blemishes refer to defects and diseases that made an animal unfit for offering to the Lord.

In comparison, in Peter's first letter, he declares that Jesus is the Lamb of God without blemish and without spot.

And so I would say this comparable just simply says they're not like Christ.

They're unchrist-like.

These false teachers do not display Christ-likeness.

Uh uh.

And then it goes on to tell us that they're like the Old Testament prophet Balaam.

If you remember, Balaam claimed to be a prophet.

He claimed to be a prophet of God.

He claimed to speak for God.

He claimed to receive a word for God.

But then Balaam found a workaround to the clear word of God.

When God said, don't do this, Balaam somehow found a loophole to get around that.

And he was motivated by self advancement, and he preyed on the lustful desires of people.

In his commentary on 2 Peter, Curtis Vaughn said, Balaam is the prototype of an unprincipled false teacher.

Seeking gain.

He's an example.

He's a prime example.

You say, what do they look like?

Well, they look like Balaam.

And I would just point out to you, this is interesting because Balaam is an enigma, right?

An enigma is a it's like a puzzling riddle.

Like you can't quite figure it out.

Like, what is it?

What is it saying?

What does it mean?

And Balaam is an enigma.

If you read Numbers 24, 25, and 26, when you first introduced to Balaam, you're like, well, this guy seems like a pretty good guy.

He's a little bit hard-headed, but what's going on?

Then by Numbers 31, they're cursing his name because of what he had done to the nation of Israel.

And I don't think it's any accident that he's the one who's used as a comparison because false teachers are often enigmas.

They're hard to figure out.

Sometimes they are puzzling.

Like, what are they saying?

What do they mean by that word?

What did they mean by that phraseology?

Well, they could mean this, and that would be good, but it could mean that, and that's not good.

And so we need to do that work of comparing them to these examples that God gives us.

And then in the final comparison, Peter says that these false teachers are like wells without water.

Wells without water.

Now understand where they live.

They live in the Middle East.

They live in a very hot climate.

They live in a very dry climate.

If you remember when Isaac and Jacob were moving around everywhere they went, they had to try to dig wells to get water because you can't live without water.

It's not like our well-watered region in Appalachia here where it just runs off the mountains, or you can put a shovel in the ground and turn up a puddle of water.

They had to be able to dig down and find water.

And so if you are living out in that arid culture and you are perhaps on a journey and you see a well in the distance, there is hope, there is joy, there is water that is promised to you, and you get there and there's no water.

And so he is using this to describe what these false teachers are like.

They're hypocrites.

They're hypocrites who pretend to be something that they are not.

They have an outward appearance but an inward absence.

Jesus talked about them in Matthew 23 when he described them as being these beautiful monuments, these sepulchres, these tombstones that are just beautiful and marvel and ornate and decorative.

And he says, inside they're full of dead men's bones.

That's what he is describing here.

And the reality is that a well without water is incapable of living up to its promise.

And that's what a false teacher does.

They are incapable of living up to their promise.

Which brings us to the contradictions of the false teachers.

And we find those in verses 19 through 22.

The great contradiction of these false teachers is that they promise you liberty when they in fact are slaves to corruption.

Notice there in our text, 2 Peter 2, 19, while they promise them liberty, they themselves are servants of corruption.

They're slaves to corruption.

These false teachers have heard the gospel, but they have not accepted the whole Christ.

They've not accepted the whole Christ.

Instead, they have modified the teachings of Christ to suit their own sinful desires.

They promise liberty to others which they themselves do not have.

Oh, that's the contradiction of these false teachers.

They are offering you a false bill of goods.

Hey, if you follow this teaching, you'll have this and you'll get that and you'll experience this.

And they know that they're not telling the truth because they don't have the liberty and the freedom that they're claiming to offer to you and I.

And that's why it is interesting that Peter closes this chapter with a proverb.

A true proverb, he says.

And by that he means that anybody who is reading this knows, has seen the example of this proverb.

A dog that eats its own vomit.

Right?

Let's be gross for a minute.

How many of y'all seen that?

Right?

Well, you haven't lived if you haven't seen that.

And a pig that returns to the mud, right?

We had a few pigs when I was a kid, and that was one characteristic.

They like to be muddy.

You could wash them off, but they go back to it.

And so Peter says the true proverb, and he's using this to describe the contradiction of these false teachers, is that the dog, listen, think about that, the dog eats what it vomited out that had made it sick.

So the very thing that had made it sick that it expelled from its body, now it consumes it back into its body.

It doesn't make sense, does it?

It doesn't make sense.

I threw up after eating an egg sandwich when I was eight years old, and I didn't eat another one until I was about 28.

So it just doesn't make sense.

That you expelled something that made you sick, and now you're taking it back in.

And then the same with the pig that has been rinsed off, it returns to the mud.

What is it describing here?

Well, what it is describing is intended to illustrate a temporary and superficial change that did not change the nature of the animal.

It didn't change the nature of the animal.

That's the nature of a dog.

I won't talk about all the things I've seen dogs eat.

Yes.

But you know because you've seen them.

Why?

Because that's the nature of those animals.

And it's the nature of a pig to live in a pig sty and to live in mud.

And you can see a temporary change, but it doesn't change the nature of them.

And that's the proverb that Peter uses to describe the contradiction of these false teachers.

The same is true for them because there may have been a temporary and superficial change, but it has not changed the person's nature, because only the full acceptance of Jesus as your Savior and Lord can do that.

And so if you have not received the whole Christ, Jesus, the Savior and Lord, then it has not changed your fundamental sinful nature.

And there may be a temporary reform in your life, but sure enough, you'll return to the base things of your sinfulness.

That's what Peter is describing here.

And then those verses that I kind of skipped over that makes a lot of people wonder about if you can lose your salvation, right?

It would be better for you to have not known the way of righteousness and then know it and to turn from it.

The latter end is worse than the beginning.

What Peter is declaring is that their nature was never changed.

There was a superficial, temporary, outward appearance of a change.

But just like the dog, just like the pig, they did not have a changed nature.

And what is so dangerous about that?

Well, it is that they have heard the gospel, but they have calloused themselves to the gospel so that it makes it more difficult for them to actually come to Christ in the future.

That's a real danger.

But if you don't accept Christ as the Bible presents him, but you have modified him in some way to suit your desires, you really harden yourself against receiving Christ in the future.

Truly, that is a worse condition to be in than in the beginning one.

And so it's a dangerous thing to come to church and resist Christ.

It's a dangerous thing.

We want lost people to come.

We want to share with you the gospel.

I think that it's the best place that you can be, but if you sit here Sunday after Sunday after Sunday hearing about Christ and yet rejecting him, it's dangerous.

You're building up a spiritual callus on your heart to where you are getting numb to it.

Perhaps the first few times you heard it, you were under conviction.

You didn't know what was going on.

I mean, you felt like you took medicine on an empty stomach and you were sweating and you were chilling and you had an elevated heart rate and you didn't know what was going on, but you white-knuckled it through the invitation and you did not come to Christ.

And the next time it wasn't quite as intense, and the next time it's less and less, so pretty soon you can sit through a church service where the gospel is preached and you're unaffected by it.

Such a dangerous place to be in.

Such a dangerous place to be in.

And I would say to you, the need for discernment is great because the cost of deception is so high.

We need to be able to discern.

Peter took this entire second chapter to warn us about false teachers, false teaching, to tell us that there are eternal consequences if we get swept up in this, and then to arm us so that we can discern who are those voices of truth and who are not.

And so I encourage you to have keen observation, critical thinking, and biblical knowledge when you are allowing people to influence you in the name of Christ.

Would you bow with me?

So we bow our heads for just a moment.

Perhaps you're here today and you have not yet trusted Christ, my friend.

It is your decision to make.

Nobody can force you, nobody can make you.

God Himself doesn't force you to believe.

But there is a great danger if you resist when God is speaking to you.

If you're here today and God's been working in your heart, calling you to himself, you know that you need to be saved.

And I implore you, yield to him today.

Turn from your sin, repent and believe.

Because you do not want to hear in your heart to the gospel.

And for those of us who are believers, we need to have discernment.

Especially in this age where we have so many voices coming in through social media all the time.

Algorithms pick that up and will inundate us with it.

We need to have discernment to know who to listen to and who not to listen to, because we certainly do not want to be led astray.

Dear Heavenly Father, I thank you so much for your word.

I thank you for the ability of discernment.

That divine equipping that you gave to us that no other animal on the planet has, truly, it is part of your divine nature and makeup.

Lord, may we not act like brute beasts when we have been created in your image and your likeness.

Father, I pray today that you would help all of us to grow in this area of discernment that we would know what is real Christianity and we would know also what is counterfeit.

Who are the real teachers and who are the fakes?

Oh, Father, we just want to faithfully follow you until you send Jesus back to call us home.

I pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

If you would stand with me and let's sing Jesus, keep me near the cross.