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Exploitative Expositors (2 Peter 2:1-3)

Scott Kercheville
02/26/23 - Sun AM

After the airplane highjackings on September 11th, airport security changed dramatically. Before, it was very quick. You could walk through security with ease. Family and friends could walk with you to the gate before heading back home. It was pleasant. Now, we take large electronics out of our bags and our things are scanned more carefully. We take off our shoes, belts, and jackets and step into full body scanners. Do your wife and three-year old baby want to walk you to the gate before you leave them for a month? Forget about it. Why? It is because we have learned very important lessons. Not everyone is who they appear to be. And some of the most destructive things are not easily spotted.

Peter has just fortified our confidence in the Old Testament prophets. What they said about Jesus’ powerful coming has been confirmed in the transfiguration, so we ought to pay careful attention to them in this darkness. But that doesn’t mean that everyone who says “Thus says the Lord…” is being carried along by the Holy Spirit. Peter says in verse 1: False prophets arose among the people back then, just as there will be — notice the shift he makes — false teachers among you. This morning we will consider four things Peter says about false teachers — or, if you will, exploitative expositors.

(a) Scriptural: False teachers secretly bring in destructive heresies by using Scripture wrongly (2:1;  3:15-17). Some of the most destructive things are not easily spotted. And one way the false teachers go undetected is they teach the same Scriptures. False prophets say “thus says the Lord” when the Lord has not spoken to them. But false teachers say, “This is what Paul means when he says that; this is the significance of Jesus doing that.” But actually, they’re twisting the Scriptures. As one author remarked, the most difficult heresies to overcome throughout church history came from people who knew the Scriptures well (Matthew Barrett, Simply Trinity). Satan quotes book-chapter-verse, and so do false teachers.

We are all very blessed to have access to the Scriptures. But we aren’t immune to reading it wrongly or being swayed by false teaching. What makes this especially dangerous is that our generation can tend to avoid weighty doctrine to ask questions that feel more relevant: “What does this Scripture mean for me and my life?” Here’s a caution for our Bible classes. We know well that just because someone preaches the truth to twenty people doesn’t mean twenty people believe it. But just because twenty people have a lively discussion of Scripture doesn’t mean we came to a knowledge of the capital ’T’ Truth. There’s no simple answer for this, but allow me to offer two suggestions from Scripture.

First, Paul told Timothy that the church is a buttress of the truth and he told him to entrust what he heard from Paul to faithful men and women who will teach others (1 Tim. 3:15; 2 Tim. 2:2). If we believe Timothy and others passed on what they heard from the apostles and the church has embodied the Truth and yet we find in ourselves a belief or practice completely foreign to the church over the past 2,000 years — or even beliefs and practices only found in those removed from the church — we should have the humility to consider that we may likely be the ones who are in the wrong. This is not at all to say that the church has  historically been perfect. I see this as more of a proverb that is often true rather than a law. New and novel beliefs and practices will deviate us from the ancient path.

Second, heresies have historically come about when people try to “declutter” ancient beliefs. As one writer cautions, some doctrines may not appear pragmatic, or practical, so we may think it best to declutter our beliefs like Marie Kondo declutters houses. If it doesn’t seem practical — if it does not “spark joy” — toss it out (Samuel James, Does It Matter What I Believe?). Consider one example: the Corinthian church struggled to comprehend how the resurrection worked — “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?” — so many set it aside as incomprehensible and unintentionally undermined the Christian hope in the process (1 Cor. 15). Or consider how the Jews in Jerusalem and Galatia did the same with justification by faith: it upended their entire culture to receive baptized believers into their community without circumcision, so they tried to require circumcision and unknowingly nullified the gift of God.

People often ask, “What practical difference does doctrine make?” The challenge is that we cannot often see why it matters. It may take years and decades. That’s why C.S. Lewis urges us to have a different mindset: if something is true, every honest man will want to believe it even if it gives him no help at all (“Man or Rabbit,” in God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics). Truth matters whether it seems immediately practical or not. It may feel cluttered to confess that Jesus was begotten of the Father before all ages, or that in the future Jesus will come from heaven to judge the living and the dead, or that the Holy Spirit is worshipped and glorified together with the Father and the Son, or that baptism is for the remission of sins. It may seem narrow-minded to hold that marriage is exclusively between a man and a woman, or that we don’t sleep together before we are married, or to not permit divorce and remarriage except for the cause of adultery, or to hardly even listen to someone’s new argument from Scripture about these things. But it is because the most influential heretics know Scripture well. Holding to the ancient doctrines — not decluttering them — will make a difference in the long run by keeping us on the ancient paths.

(b) Sensual: They are denying their Master and leading many to sensuality (2). There is always something attractive about what false teachers say. In this case, they are opening the doors on sensuality. And that doesn’t lead just a few people to follow, it leads the masses. In preparation I listened to a good sermon from John Piper on this text. What he said in this sermon from 1982 struck me: “It seems almost impossible that such a thing as arrogant sexual immorality could actually be taught in the church.” It doesn’t seem impossible anymore, does it? Our world has changed a lot in 40 years — but really, this problem is as old as Christianity. Peter and the generations after him dealt with this. And you’d think that the Scriptures warned enough about this that none of these false teachers would ever be followed, but many follow. It seems like every month I find out about another Christian teacher from my bookshelves who now endorses what is plainly sexual immorality. Peter says they are denying the Master who bought them — whether explicitly or implicitly. Hear that: They come from within our churches. At one time the Lord Jesus snatched from the fire. But they don’t want him as an authoritative Master. They want Jesus the Lamb, not the Lion.

So, don’t be too surprised when someone you love wanders off. Try to snatch them out of the fire! But we ourselves must take care that we aren’t burned, swayed to compromise in the process. Don’t follow the masses. They will repeatedly say that the banner over them is the love of Jesus and the grace of our God, but sensuality is their rallying point plain and simple.

(c) Scandalous: Because of them the Way of Truth will be blasphemed (2). We look back at the crusades, at the mistreatment of Native Americans, and the African slave trade and we wonder how Christians could have participated in those things. More recently, some of us even have grandparents and great grandparents who would not worship with blacks, and we hang our heads in disappointment. But we are not the only ones shaking our heads. Back then, those “Christians” were just going along with culture. They were in the main. But now that the larger culture has awakened to these wrongs, the culture looks back Christians then and blaspheme the way of truth because of them. How could Christians actually go along with something that is so apparently destructive?

Right now conservative Christians are mocked for not going along with sexual liberation. But do you know in the ancient world that Christians eventually came to be seen as the ones helping society become better? One of the many reasons Christianity started turning heads was because churches demanded that husbands respect their wives and restrain their sexual energies to the marriage bed. Paul insisted that wives had conjugal rights too. Even more, he taught that unmarried men and women could play significant roles in the Lord’s work.

Do you think one day people will find that their “theology” of sexual liberation isn’t so progressive and fulfilling as they once thought it was? That it was actually destructive and narrow minded to encourage people to change their bodies to match their minds? Or to divorce when something better comes along? Or to indulge in sexuality without marital vows? Or to pursue an unnatural marriage that ultimately leaves them unhappy and even childless? In that day, they’ll once again look to Christians who caved and shake their heads. Let us beware to not follow false teachers, because in the future it will always become plain that their way was not good, and the Way of Truth will be blasphemed because of them.

(d) Self-Seeking: In their greed they will exploit you (3). False teachers avoid ancient doctrines to make Christianity feel more relevant to us and they seem to offer a more love and grace filled Christianity. They seem like care about us. They agree with us. They get angry at Christians who said hurtful things to us in the past. They are offering a church where you can belong. Max left a mailer in my office advertising a sermon series on Genesis 37-50. The tagline? “Dream Again.” Joseph’s dreams came true, so don’t give up on your dreams. Another ad was for a Numbers series. Tagline? “My beautifully flawed journey.” God’s faithfulness to Israel through their rebellion that led to millions of people dishonoring the Lord and dying  — it’s a beautifully flawed journey? I’m not casting a final judgment on that church, but that stinks like exploitative explanations of Scripture. Regardless of the truth about that church, why do false teachers always sound like they have something so relevant? Peter says that they are motivated by greed. They say what we want to hear because they want our money and our praise.

Wherever we are, it is important to ask who our teachers love most. If it comes across like they love us more than God, there’s a red flag. We ought to love each other because we have learned love from God. And if they seem like they love me more than God’s glory, there’s no solid truth under their feet, and their love is not genuine. They love themselves. What happens if I stop following them and putting money in their pockets? Would they keep praying for us? Plead for us to return to the Lord? Would they honor God and love us enough to tell us something we really don’t want to hear?

Judgment and salvation are coming. Jesus will come from heaven to judge the living and the dead — his kingdom shall have no end. But while we live in the darkness, we are all looking for light. The Old Testament prophets offer us a lamp in the darkness until the day dawns. They were carried along by the Holy Spirit as they spoke from God. But not everyone offering help in the darkness has the Light. Some of the most dangerous people and teachings are not easily spotted. We certainly do not want to be divisive and call everyone we disagree with a false teacher. But false prophets ultimately served as the downfall for Israel, and false teachers have been and will be the downfall of many today. We live in a time where everyone with a smartphone and some marketing genius can create a big pulpit and following for themselves. But avoiding all teachers to simply pick up our Bibles to find truth for ourselves and by ourselves opens us up to danger too. The church gets infiltrated by false teachers, but we need the larger church (and its true teachers) as a buttress of the truth. There’s a balance. What can we do? Truly, this is a time for prayer.

“Father in heaven, your Son has taught us that everything hidden is being revealed in him. Will you help us to listen carefully to you, your Son, and your Spirit that we might know the Truth and be set free from the lies of Satan? And even to be set free from our own wrong-headed ways of seeing things? Guide us safely through the winds and waves of doctrine to the Truth and the Light. Help us to love Truth whether we think it will help us or not, for you are the Truth. Keep false teachers away from us, and help us to see them when they come. Help us to carefully explain the truth to those who are in error, and to boldly correct and drive away those who refuse to repent of error. We long to magnify your name in the world, give us wisdom and courage to do this with the truth and love in an age of obscurity and hate. Come quickly, end the night, bring the day, shine in the world and in our hearts. Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit forevermore, Amen.”