Good morning, church. It is great seeing all of you here today, and hopefully you have all of your rapture preparations in order, because tomorrow is the solar eclipse total eclipse evidently in this, there's a like a path that it's going to go where there's a total eclipse.

So, for those of you who are unprepared. You want to get ready because tomorrow may be the day. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. But tomorrow may be the day, but I'm not, we don't know if the, what the eclipse means, it probably doesn't mean anything, but anyway, so we're doing a series through the book of second Peter and in this book of second Peter, we're in a section now where we're dealing with false teachers and false teaching.

And this is in second Peter chapter two. And in this section there, Peter's warning about false teachers and false teaching. And we're for four weeks or so we've, this is the third week and I want to do one more and next week is going to be more of a practical, just practical. How do we grow in the skill of discernment?

But this is the third one. And today we're going to be talking about deceptive strategies of false teachers. I want to tell you about a book. I have this book in my office, and I'm not going to recommend it, and the reason why will be clear in a moment. But this is not a book I recommend. But this is a book that was published in 1996.

It's called Moral Vision of the New Testament: Contemporary Introduction to New Testament Ethics. And in this book, it’s been a go to book for Christian ethics for close to 30 years, three decades. When I was in seminary, I wrote a paper for an ethics class and the title was the rhetoric of homosexual activism.

And I looked up in this morning, I looked up that paper, I had it saved on my computer, and I looked up the paper. I wanted to confirm, did I in fact cite this book as a source in my paper? And I did. This book was one of the sources cited. And in this book, Hayes he argues that homosexual sin is an abomination before God, as the scripture says.

Why am I telling you this? I'm telling you this because yesterday I learned that Richard Hayes has a new book coming out this fall that he wrote with his son. And in this book, he argues in favor of homosexuality. He has taken a pro homosexuality position, but this, his book, he's got a lot of credibility because this has been a go to book for 25 plus years.

The top two marks of false teachers, as we've talked about in previous weeks is one, they promote sin and two, they do it for profit. They have a greed motive. They promote sin and they do it for profit. A couple of weeks ago, I gave you four other characteristics of false teachers. They despise authority.

They are arrogant, they are irrational, and they are shameless. Today, I want to give you four more characteristics or at least four more points about their deceptive strategies. And then next week we'll finish with how to grow in discernment. So, let's dig in. We're in second Peter chapter two and.

We'll read verses 17 through 22, and then we will break it down a little bit at a time. Let's listen to God's word. The word these, this refers to the teachers. These are waterless springs and mists driven by a storm. For them, the gloom of utter darkness has been reserved. For speaking loud boasts of folly.

They entice by sensual passions of the flesh, those who are barely escaping from those who live in error. They promise them freedom, but they themselves are slaves of corruption. For whatever overcomes a person to that he is enslaved. For if after they have escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge of our Lord and savior, Jesus Christ.

They are again entangled in them and overcome the last state has become worse for them than the first for it would have been better for them never to have known the way of righteousness Then after knowing it to turn back from the holy commandment delivered to them What the true proverb says has happened to them.

The dog returns to its own vomit and the sow, after washing herself, returns to wallow in the mire. This is God's word. First point, false teachers promote a false or distorted gospel. False teachers promote a false or distorted gospel. Now let's go through these verses again. In verse 17. He calls the false teachers waterless springs and mists driven by a storm.

And then in verse 19, he says, they promise them freedom, but they themselves are slaves of corruption.

So, they promote a false gospel. They promote some kind of false teaching, and it's a counterfeit Christianity. So, it has the appearance of the truth. It has the appearance of true Christianity, but it is actually a counterfeit gospel. It's an empty promise. So, if you can imagine in the environment where he was writing, it was in the Middle East and in the intense heat of the Middle East, there's no running water.

It's not like you can just go to a drinking fountain and quench your thirst. And so, springs were a very important source of life. It could save your life literally if you were dying of thirst, which You know, it was a very real possibility. And so, if you're dying of thirst, a spring of water could save your life.

And the false teachers, they are waterless springs. So, it's they have the appearance of something lifesaving life giving, but in fact, it's empty. They have the appearance of offering something that is giving you freedom. They have the appearance of promising you life, but they themselves are slaves.

They don't even have freedom themselves. So, it's not merely an error. It's not merely something that is untrue or false. It is eternity is at stake. It's a high stakes kind of error. Heaven and hell are at stake. It's where truth matters the most. So, it's not just that the wrong it's that they are wrong about the thing that you must get right about the most important thing for us to get right.

So, if somebody offers you a bean burrito, and you open it up and you start eating it, and there's chicken inside, they've lied to you. They've told you a lie. That's a sin. If they offer you a bean burrito, and you start eating it, and it's got poison inside, then they've lied to you, and they've committed murder.

So, there's two cents here and that's what false teachers do. That's not only that they are lying and being deceptive, but they're committing murder. They are lying about the very thing that is the most important thing to get right because that's how we have eternal life. So, they're not just saying things that are not true.

They're spiritual murderers and the effect of their teaching is it sends people to hell. Verse 18 says that they entice people. By sensual passions of the flesh. That's the sexual sin part that I mentioned. That is what they're lying about. At least one of the main things that they lie about. They make allowances.

They give license for sin, particularly sexual sin, because that is a sin that people in every age are most eager to commit. So, they teach people to indulge sexual appetites without consequence. Jesus said, whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin. It would be better for him if a great millstone were hung around his neck and he were thrown into the sea.

Now the immediate context that, certainly it applies to children. But it is not limited. The application is not limited to children. Anybody who like, in a sense, we are all little ones in the sense that we are spiritual children of God. And so, anybody who teaches or speaks in such a way that leads a little one into sin, into error, especially in such a way that it gives allowance for it, and it has the great consequence then Jesus has the strongest warning for them.

It's better for them to have a big, huge millstone tied around your neck and thrown into the sea and drown. That's how serious it is. And Jesus Christ himself, this is not Peter just ranting about something cause he's annoyed. Jesus himself issued the same warning. Now there's a lot of false gospels out there and there's only one true gospel.

GK Chesterton. I love this quote. He said, there's only one way to stand up straight, but there's a lot of different ways that you can fall down. Same thing is true with the truth. The gospel, there's one gospel, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. This is, there's one truth.

But there's lots of distortions and counterfeits of the true gospel. I want to just elaborate a little bit more on one particular counterfeit, but there are others. And this one is I'm just calling it the therapeutic gospel. And this is something that you should be, when, as I describe it here, I think you'll be familiar with it because it's everywhere.

The therapeutic gospel, Justifies sin on the basis of personal feelings. Justifies sin on the basis of personal feelings. So according to the therapeutic gospel, God is like a divine therapist, and what he wants is to make us feel happy. That's what God wants for us. There was a book back in, this is 2005, an author named Christian Smith.

He was a sociologist, and he did this big study about the beliefs of American teens, the religious beliefs, and then he wrote a book about it, and he summarized. The beliefs that they held that he observed, and these aren't just Christians, these are just everybody, anybody and everybody, what they generally believe about religious things.

And the label that he gave to their beliefs is moralistic, therapeutic deism. Moralistic, therapeutic, deism. So moralistic is, it's about there's a moral component to it, but it's a therapeutic thing. So, morals are driven by therapeutic concerns. And deism is just the old view of deism, which is there's a God, but he doesn't he's not super involved in our lives.

He wound up a clock and set us off on our way. So, he's not super involved, but he is the guy who started things. And those three words capture what he says is the general religious beliefs of our day of young people. And of course, in 2005 they were the teenagers. This is 20 years later.

So now that's. Most of you people in their, mid-thirties or, twenties, thirties, forties, that kind of age range. So, the, you were the type of people that he was studying when he wrote this book. And now you may not have heard of moralistic therapeutic deism as a label, but I am pretty sure you've encountered it because it is the default religion of our country.

And that's not a true religion is the default religion and it's a false gospel. So, it's not tied to a denomination. There's no particular leader who is the champion of moralistic therapeutic deism. There's no church that you can look to and say, this is the flagship church of moralistic therapeutic deism because it's more of a flavor.

It's the seasoning that you would put, in every dish. It's that, it's like how much of this flavoring informs everybody's thinking. And I would say a lot of us, like in, in our, in our tribe, our reformed Christianity tribe, this is flavored in the way that we think a lot of times, and we may not realize it.

And that's why we want to point it out and correct it. But it's everywhere. It's in every church. And he gave five beliefs. He summarized this with five beliefs and here they are. The first belief, God created the world. That's the deism part. Number two, God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other as taught by the Bible and other world religions.

That's the moralism part. So, here's the moral imperative. You ready? God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other as taught in the Bible and other world religions. So, there's this deistic God who created things and he wants us to be good, nice, and fair to each other and all religions basically teach the same thing.

This is Islam. It's a religion of peace and Judaism. It's a religion of peace and Christianity. It's a religion of peace. And it's all one God. There's a lot of different ways to get to God. And what he really wants of us is this moral imperative be nice, good and fair to each other. Number three, the central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.

So, God, he's all about you and he's all about wanting you to be happy, making you happy. And that is the chief end of God is man and making us happy. Number four, God does not need to be particularly involved in one's life, except when he's needed to resolve a problem. That's deism again. So, God is distant, impersonal, not really involved.

But every once in a while, if you need Superman to show up and rescue you, as you're, dangling from a building, it's about to collapse. God will show up and, break glass in case of emergency kind of circumstances. Number five, good people go to heaven when they die. Now, if nobody in this room, most likely at least in the Christian would say, that's my belief.

Here's my creed. I'm the moralistic therapeutic deism creed. And here's what I assert. Here's the affirmations of what I believe. Nobody would say that. And yet this flavor at a more emotional and intuitive level informs the way we often think about. What we do say about our creeds and confessions and doctrines, we believe that informs the way we perceive church and the Christian life and the scriptures and God and salvation, all of these things.

So, we think nice, good, fair to each other. That is, that's really all that God really wants from us. And God, he's out there, but he didn't really get involved that much. And you keep, if you're nice to people, you'll go to heaven when you die, because God owes us, eternal life because God wants us to be happy.

You can see how it works. Now those beliefs are anti gospel. That's a false empty gospel. That is a waterless spring that is very common in our day. And yet this is an empty promise. So, what moralistic therapeutic deism is, it's like a, an infection that can get any church or any denomination or church or, Christian community, it can infect any number of things that attaches itself like a virus and it just spreads around, and people think this way.

The net effect of this thinking is a, our subjective inner experiences become God. If it feels good, then it's from God. God wants you to be happy. God wants you to have things that will make you happy. God wants things to go well for you. That's God. If it doesn't feel good, or if it hurts our feelings, or if it offends me, it cannot be from God because God would never.

Hurt our feelings or offend us. So, we have to reject that. So moralistic therapeutic deism, it's the inner belief that our emotions and our desires are the ultimate gauge of reality and truth. And this is the default belief about Christianity in our society. Now this is important. This is the default belief that many Christians have that are true Christians that are saved.

Some of these beliefs are woven in. The disease has infected them and even though they are truly converted, they believe the Bible and the true gospel. Some of their inclinations are informed by this moralistic therapeutic deism because it is a bundle of contradictions.

Even though it contradicts the true gospel, we'll believe the true gospel and still believe contradictory things at an emotional level and make decisions in life and the way we feel about life based on some of these contradictory feelings. So, it's the default view of a lot of Christians, but non-Christians also when they think about what Christianity is.

They think that's the true Christianity. So, they might say, Jesus is a great moral teacher. Jesus is a like Jesus loves you. I was driving Owen to a friend's house yesterday for a few hours. And on the way out of this neighborhood, I saw a big sign and it said, God is always love.

And I'm like that's true, but probably not in the way that you're meaning it. You probably are meaning something more like moralistic, therapeutic deism. That's your God. And the love is a therapeutic love, which is God wants you to feel good all the time, always. It's, it was a creed, and it was this huge sign out in front of a church in this neighborhood, a good size church.

And so, whenever non-Christians, whenever they think about what true Christianity is, who Jesus is, who God the Father is, probably what's going on in their mind is not the God of the Bible, that we would believe, but a God of their emotions that is part of this American folk religion of moralistic therapeutic deism.

And then further, whenever a non-Christian says, I am becoming a Christian, I want to follow Jesus. So, they make a profession of faith. Very often they are making a profession of faith towards this God that is a false God. And they're believing in a false gospel and they're labeling it Christianity. You with me?

So, there's, they're saying, I'm a Christian. Now I want to become a Christian. I want to get baptized. I want to follow Jesus and join a church. In their mind, they're thinking not of the God of the Bible and the true gospel of Jesus Christ, but they're thinking of some moralistic therapeutic deism gospel and that sort of God, and they are signing on to that.

So, there's not a true conversion necessarily that has taken place, but they will give an indication. Now, what I'm saying now is going to be more relevant when I get to my fourth point. But just file that away for now. They think that this is the true God, but they're not. But there are nevertheless false teachers pushing this false gospel, and they're filling their churches with false converts that will say, so and so Christian church, so and so community church, so and so Baptist church.

But it is not true. There, there could be a good number of people within it that are not truly converted. So, what's the remedy? The remedy is we need to teach the true gospel, the whole counsel of God's word. We need to make sure that we are representing God accurately and that we are refuting error when we see it.

That's what Peter is doing in this letter. He's Hey, there's a false gospel out there. There are false teachers out there. And he goes on in this very vivid, colorful language to talk about just how harmful and destructive their teaching is. And that's what we've been studying for the last three weeks.

And that's what we're doing now. We're saying like, hey, this is harmful. This is bad. We want to make sure that we're not trying to drink sand from a waterless spring that we think is nourishment because it's not, what did the apostle Paul say? So, we've heard from Peter, we've heard from Jesus. The apostle Paul says this.

But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, basically if we changed our mind, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again, if anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed. It is hard to imagine a stronger language that Paul could use to warn against this sort of error.

That's the first point. And that's the longest point. The next one's long too, but the third and fourth one, a little bit shorter. So, here's number two, false teachers are confident, charismatic, engaging, and nice. False teachers are confident, charismatic, engaging, and nice. So, we go back to our text here, 17 through 19.

He mentions here for speaking loud, boasts.

So, they're speaking something loudly. That's confident, it's boastful, but it is foolish. So, they're saying something that is really dumb. Something that is foolish and harmful, but they're saying it in a very confident, loud, brash manner. So, the Greek word here, there's a single Greek word hyper on costs is the Greek word.

I probably not saying that even remotely. But the definition in the Bible dictionary is haughty, pompous, so they're confident and they, it's like they're supremely confident in what they say. Now there's a parallel text to 2 Peter and Jude. I'll read you what Jude 16 says. Jude says they are grumblers, malcontents, following their own sinful desires.

They are loud mouthed boasters. Showing favoritism to gain advantage. So false teachers overcome the resistance to their teaching that may be presented by true Christians or discerning Christians. They overcome their resistance and their suspicions with an exuberant confidence. And the thing is that confidence is compelling.

Confidence is persuasive. A confident and charismatic personality can be very convincing. And so, their confidence creates the illusion that he knows what he's talking about. She knows what she's talking about. Like they, they said that they've studied the Bible about this. They probably more than I have about the subject.

So, they gotta be right. I can trust them. You ever take your car to a mechanic and if a mechanic's I don't know what's going on here. It could be anything. Just prepare yourself for, could be thousands of dollars, it could be 50 bucks. You just don't know. That's one mechanic and you're going to be like, I don't want to talk to this guy.

But then you go to a next mechanic and he's, I've seen this a hundred times. The 2013 model they've had a few recalls on this issue. And it's, this is a very common thing. I know how to take care of it, and it'll be 300. Now he could be totally making that up, totally lying to you through his teeth, but his confidence is convincing.

You're going to think that guy knows what he's talking about. He's got several examples. He's right. I'm of course he's right. I can trust this guy. He's seen it before. Most of us aren't religious experts. Even some of you that know the Bible pretty well. There's always so much more. And I, there are a lot of things that I don't know a lot about.

A lot of things, a lot of areas in my own thinking about theology. And I'm like, you know what? I'm not as, I'm not as confident in what I think about these things as I am about these other things. And so, we're. There's a lot of areas where somebody else that presents themselves as an expert, they know what they're talking about and their confidence masks a folly, but it's loud boasting folly.

It's foolishness that they're saying, but they're saying it was such an energetic, charismatic smile. And they're so convincing and they seem like really smart. And so, since we don't know the thing, I haven't studied all the things that this guy's studied. And so, they must know something that I don't. And that's very convincing.

So false teachers, then they pray. On the ignorance of other people. And they use that to sell a false gospel to naive people. There's a couple from CTK. They moved away a few months ago and they were falling in love with the church. They love the church. And I remember whenever the week they found out that they were moving away they pulled me aside on the way out the door and they were both in tears.

Man, we love it here. We're plugged in here. We don't want to leave, but we have to like work is taking us to another city. So, we're devastated. But they said, whenever we get settled in, we know what neighborhood we're going to be, can you help us find a church? And I said, of course that's one of the, that's a, in this ministry context, we have a lot of transient people.

That's always a big thing I try to help people do. So, they sent me a few links to churches. They said, here's a few churches in our neighborhood, would you mind checking these out for me? And honestly, that was a real eye opener because I was shocked. I was shocked by what I saw. One of them is a straight up apostate church.

No doubt about it. This church is not a true church. And I can say that with confidence. When I pulled up the websites I was getting some red flags. To be precise, I was getting some pride flags on the church website. And so, I clicked on the pride flag and what, there was an openness and inclusion statement from the church and pretty much they are a totally gay affirming church, and they belong to an apostate denomination, the United Church of Christ.

It's an apostate denomination. It's not a. It's totally apostate, not a true church, not a true denomination. But if you look at the pictures and the pictures are so it's like a good aesthetics can man that can overcome a lot of resistance. You got a pretty website, you got these young, happy, smiling people.

They seem so warm and inviting. You just think man, I could just, I feel like I know you just looking at your picture. I can imagine people feeling that way looking at this website. Because it is so attractive. Smiley, friendly people. Their whenever you pull up their website, the first thing, it says, feel the love.

Sunday's at 10am, feel the love. And of course, We want people to feel loved here, but we want them to feel love that is as love as it is defined by scripture. The full range of what love is and what it requires. Not just an emotional warm fuzzy that you get when you're here for an hour and a half.

But it was very obvious from looking at this website. What they mean by that is come and feel the warm fuzzies for an hour or so on Sunday. Come here, we'll give you warm fuzzies, guaranteed. It's a false church, preaching a false gospel, but it's a false gospel that will make people feel good, and that's how it works.

False gospels wouldn't work if they didn't appeal to some desire within us. And they do, they appeal to a desire, and in their appeal to that desire, they send people to hell. It's, you hate to, hate, it's a sad thing to state so blatantly, but that's the truth. Just like Paul said, if anybody's preaching a false gospel, a different gospel, let them be accursed.

He said, they are going to hell, they're a child of hell, and they're sending people to hell. That's what Paul means in Galatians 1 when he said that. Here's what Paul says in Romans 16. So, remember our point here is about confident, charismatic, engaging, and nice. Paul says, I appeal to you brothers, watch out for those who cause divisions and create obstacles contrary to the doctrine that you've been taught.

Avoid them. Avoid that church. Avoid that teacher. For such persons do not serve our Lord Christ, or a false teacher, but their own appetites. And now here's the trick. And by smooth talk and flattery, they deceive. Who do they deceive? They deceive the hearts of the naive. We'll talk more about naive Christians in a moment.

But that's what they do. It's, I know I've said this a hundred times lately, but I just got to keep saying it. False teachers don't have horns. They're people that you want to like them. They will smile. They'll sound so earnest and sincere, and they'll go get warm fuzzies maybe. And that's how it works.

To me, it was an obviously a false church. And from the things I saw on their website, second Peter could have been written directly to them, but not all churches or websites are quite so clear. Sometimes it's a lot more subtle. And it's harder to see because they position themselves as a voice of reason and compassion.

And these kinds of false teachers, they market themselves to an explicitly conservative audience. So, they want to tell you this is, we're going to tell you a more nuanced biblical view, the biblical view that is a more compassionate and engaging discussion of this or that doctrine. But they're aiming at conservatives.

So, they don't overtly and explicitly affirm sin. They won't say, we are affirming of this or that sin. They don't do that. What they do with sin is they complicate it. And they nuance it and then they frame it as a matter of compassion. There's a guy who's a master of this. And I'm hesitant to, I'm hesitant to say his name.

Because it's because it is so difficult to discern, but I'm, I want to tell you his name and I'm like, I'm not confidently declaring. That this man is a false teacher. He is a wolf sending people to hell, but man all the signs are pointing in that direction. So, his name is Preston Sprinkle. It's this guy here, Preston Sprinkle.

And I want to just take a minute and tell you as a case study of discernment about the confident, charismatic, engaging, winsome personality who is promoting false teaching to, and he's marketing it to conservative Christians. He's. He's recruited, excuse me, recruited these high-profile people.

So that's Jackie Hill Perry. She's pretty well-known Christian rap artist. And there's Francis Chan, who is written. Was it Crazy Love? Is that the book that that he was famous for? And some other stuff. He was pretty big on the conference circuit 10, 20 years ago. But they're pretty well known, and they've got this sex curriculum.

And then the curriculum that they're selling is something that is meant to be helpful to girls. Deal with young people in working through sexuality issues. Took these screenshots from these are Facebook ads. So, I took these screenshots of Facebook ads, and I want to read to you some of the marketing copy and I just pay attention to the clever use of language.

The clever use of language here, and I'll highlight as I go along, but it's clever language that appeals to conservative Christians. So, it's hey, conservative Christians, we know you're about the Bible. We know you want good theology. We know you care about your children and want to raise them right.

Here's a nuanced, compassionate series to show you how to do it. Alright, so here's I don't know if it's on there. Yeah, so what I'm reading to is from a different ad. It's not one of these here, but. So, here's what the marketing copy says. Questions about sexuality and gender have become the most pressing ethical questions facing the church today.

That's true. And this generation is especially swimming in the deep end of these topics. That's true. Christian sexuality, that's the name of the curriculum. Christian sexuality is a comprehensive, so they're thorough, they've done their homework. Relational, meaning it's not these abstract doctrines, it really cares about people.

Narrative based, so it's about story, so it's not going to be boring. Narrative based video curriculum that, now listen to who they're sending it to, youth leaders, mentors, and parents can use to disciple high school age youth. So, they want you to take their curriculum and to promote it and use it to talk with children.

In a Christ-centered vision for sex, sexuality, and gender. It's made up of 25 interviews. including stories of those who experience sexual brokenness. Now that sounds so sweet, doesn't it? I just love people who are experiencing sexual brokenness. Doesn't that sound compassionate? It sounds like you really care, but they wouldn't say what the Bible says, who are sinning in sexual abominations or something like the Bible would say, they don't use that because that's not good marketing copy.

That doesn't really appeal to the heartstrings. It doesn't tug and make you feel like I don't want my kids to experience sexual brokenness. We want to take them through this curriculum. That's going to warp their thinking about sexuality. Including stories of those who experienced sexual brokenness, there's no agency, by the way, they experience it.

They are the passive victims of something that's just out there floating around sexual, it's called sexual brokenness. It's just out there in the air. Then this poor kid just walking along and boom, that poor kid just got hit with this sexual brokenness thing. And the kid's I didn't do anything.

The kid didn't make a choice. They didn't, they're not tempted. They're not acting volitionally in a way that is sinful. No, they are experiencing sexual brokenness. and sexual flourishing, expert commentaries about the Bible. Ah, okay. We care about scripture, don't we? So, we want expert commentaries about the Bible and our bodies, brains, and culture.

Now, if you dig into the curriculum, they don't deal with homosexual temptation as sinful. Michael, the temptation is fine. The desires are fine. The orientation is fine. It's only when you act out on it. that it really becomes a problem. And so, somebody could be like, you are a gay Christian.

And as long as you don't actually commit a sexual act with another person of the same sex, then you're fine. And that's, it's basically a way to create a little space, build a fortress around a particular sinful desire and say, this one is untouchable. You can even make that an, you can make that an orientation.

You can make that your personal identity. As long as you don't act out on it. And it is so deceptive because it, it convinces people that here is something that I don't need to avoid. I don't need to worry about. I think it's fine. And if it's fine, if it's morally neutral, there's no moral content to a gay Christian identity at all, then it's fine.

If I'm a gay Christian, you're a gay Christian, everybody's a gay Christian. Why would it matter? It does matter because what we've seen in second Peter, they entice sensual passions, right? So, they fan into flame a desire that should be mortified and repented of, and rather they fan it into a flame, and they entice sensual passions and they do it for gain using like they show partiality to gain favoritism.

So, they don't openly affirm homosexuality and that's the hook. They will say, we believe traditional historic Christian teaching about sexuality. Okay, I trust you now. I trust you because I believe historic Christian teaching about sexuality. And then they say, it's okay to be gay Christian. It's okay to have these desires, so long as you don't act on them.

Okay, that's not historic Christian teaching on sexuality. That's a lie. But what it does is it reels people in, so they don't affirm homosexuality. They complicated, nuance it and frame it around compassion. And the effect of this kind of teaching is It tells people there's no repentance necessary. It makes allowance for sin.

They're marketing this curriculum directly to churches, small groups, and parents. And I learned recently that this is the go-to material that CRU, the Campus Ministry, Campus Crusade for Christ, they train their staff members in this material. So, CRU now is, the staff members are it's part of their evangelism.

Oh, God doesn't, you can still be, you can still be gay and become a Christian. It's like becoming an evangelistic strategy. And we just make a prediction here. I 100 percent guarantee you that any church or ministry that uses this material will end up with more gay kids, period. That's going to be the result.

Maybe I'm wrong, but man, I've, it's hard to, it's hard to imagine any other outcome whenever you celebrate and affirm something like this. Here's a third point. False teachers prey on new and ignorant Christians. Let me go back to my text here.

So, he says, Speaking labos of folly. I'm picking up here. Speaking labos of folly. They entice by sensual passions. Who do they entice? They entice those who are barely Escaping from those who live in error. And the word here barely is what I want to talk about here for a second. The language is a bit vague.

What does it mean to barely escape from something? And that is the literal translation, but there are other translations that can maybe shed a little bit more light on it because ESV says barely escaping. The NIV says just escaping. The new revised standard version says people who have just escaped. In the Bible commentary they've been using for this series is Tom Schreiner.

And what he argues in his is that this refers to new converts. Barely escaped, what it means is recently escaped. It's somebody, it's people that barely doesn't mean it's like they just barely got it out of there, but rather it's like their escape was recent. So, it's barely in the sense that it had just happened.

Meaning that he's talking about people who are newer converts and new converts can be a long period of time. Some people can be a new convert for the rest of their life if they don't mature. So, he's talking about, in my view, I think he's talking about recent converts or immature, undiscerning Christians.

So, it's either a new convert in terms of time, or it's a Christian who's been a Christian for a while, but they haven't grown very much. And the point here is that false teachers are crafty schemers, and they target naive and unstable Christians who don't know the difference. They're not able to sniff it out.

A lot of people that would use Preston Sprinkles material would use it not realizing that it's actually smuggling in a false teaching because a lot of Christians, you're not Bible experts, right? A lot of people are just like, it seems good. He says all the right words. It's like it. It seems right and, but if people aren't really discerning, then they end up paying for and distributing amongst their healthy churches, a teaching that will end up be the undoing of that healthy church.

False teachers target naive and spiritually immature Christians, unstable Christians, because they're an easy mark. More mature Christians are able to discern the error, or at least they can do it better. And so, they're not an easy mark for false teaching. And so now the text from Hebrews five. This is what the book of Hebrews says exactly.

For those, by this time, you ought to be teachers, mature. But instead, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food. For everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness. They don't know the Bible very well. They don't know theology very well.

They're unstable. They're not as mature since he's a child, but solid food is for the mature. How do you define mature? Those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil. Mature Christians are more. They're more able to sniff it out.

And so next week, I want to devote a whole sermon to just how do we grow in our discernment. So, we'll just move to the last point here. Number four, false teachers lead people to abandon the faith. And that's what the final three verses of this text are talking about. For if, after they have escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overcome, the last state has become worse for them than the first.

For it would have been better for them to, better for them never to have known the way of righteousness than after knowing it to turn back from the holy commandment delivered to them. What the true proverb says has happened to them. The dog returns to its own vomit. And the sow, after washing herself, returns to wallow in the mire.

There's some difficulties in this text that we don't have time to address. Just wo I'll just say it at the outset. I don't think Peter is teaching here on b I'm convictionally convinced that Peter's not teaching that true Christians can lose their salvation. I think he is speaking phenomenologically, which means he is speaking in terms of as a hypothetical, but it is not a real possibility given so many other things that he's already said in this, in first and second Peter already.

So, he is not overturning things that he had previously taught. Nevertheless, the result of false teaching is it ruins people spiritually and it leads them to shipwreck their faith. Because false teachers, they don't care about the sheep. Jesus said, they're not, they're hired hands. They're not true shepherds.

The good shepherd lays down his life. He does whatever he can to protect the sheep. False teachers don't care about the sheep. They don't love the sheep. They love their platform, their influence, their money. And so, their followers end up abandoning the faith, denying the true gospel. And in such cases, when this happens from an externally visible point of view, they're very unlikely to return.

A person who commits apostasy.

If like visibly apostate, there are instances where a person who commits apostasy, they return to the faith. That is possible, but it is very unlikely. It is very difficult because as he described here, because they've already vomited out sin and corruption, right? Like a dog. They just vomited out sin and corruption.

They've already been washed in they've been bathed in the goodness of God. So, the, it's like a pig in a pig site has been washed clean, like a dog that just vomited out this sin and corruption and things like that. So, they've, when in doing that, it's like they've seen and tasted the goodness of God and the beauty of the gospel.

They've seen the truth and experienced the goodness. And then after having seen and experienced this, they vomited out the bed and they've been cleansed. And it's like they go back to and eat their own vomit like a dog does. It's like you don't know the difference between a feast of grace and vomit that you've just puked out.

And so, a person who can't see the difference, they can't they, having seen so much goodness and experienced so much goodness, if they can't tell the difference between that and eating their own vomit, then it is very unlikely that they'll ever see the difference. And that is testimony that the grace of God is not in them.

So, it, the fact that they went back to it is a very good indicator that they never embraced the faith truly in the first place. That doesn't mean Peter's teaching that true Christians can lose their salvation because that isn't possible. Like God preserves his own. He who began a good work in you will be faithful to complete it until the day of Christ Jesus.

Philippians 1:6. Many other texts say the same thing. However, we experience and visibly see people who give an indicator that they're Christians and then they leave. 1 John, was it 2:19, says, they went out from us, but they were never of us. Because if they were of us, they would have stayed. But since they didn't stay, that means they never were of us.

So, he's not saying that they can truly leave, but our experience, the phenomena of people leaving the faith, when, because we see that, he's given an explanation here. Those people that do that, it would have been better if they never came in the first place. Because they harden themselves to the truth. So, apostasy is not true Christians losing their salvation.

Apostasy is false Christians who have been exposed. They're not true believers. Now the good news of the gospel, Jesus saves sinners. Amen. Just like you and just like me. We're sinful men and women. And he rescues us from a life of sin and death and corruption. He forgives us. He washes us clean.

We vomit out. We purge. We repent of corruption and sin. And. And so doing we gain a taste, we acquire a taste for the things of God, goodness and holiness. And so, the best indicator of genuine faith is this perseverance and growth over a period of time. True faith should age like wine.

You know in the parable of the Sowers, Jesus said there's lots of different kinds of soils. One of the soils is somebody who sprang up quickly but then fell away because they didn't have any root. Whenever trials come. So, whenever somebody makes a profession of faith and this is where we just have to, we have to exercise a little discernment, even as a church body.

Whenever somebody makes a profession of faith, we should always rejoice in that. Praise God, somebody made a profession of faith. But just have a little bit of caution, because true faith is not somebody's decision. They might have converted to a moralistic, therapeutic, deism God, and they need to be within the church community long enough to have that view corrected to understand the true gospel.

It could be their profession of faith is not merely a conversion, but their confession of the faith is the beginning of what will eventually become their conversion. It could be, I said I'm a Christian, which means I am now positively oriented towards God and the church of God and the scriptures, and because I'm now positively oriented to those things, I'm calling that a conversion, but the conversion may not happen for a month or two or a year or three later.

But it is something where God is drawing them in and that's a difficult distinction to make It's a difficult distinction to make so an outward profession of faith Somebody could still be ignorant of what it entails, and that person is naive now people who are in that space They've made a profession of faith yet.

They have not truly been converted yet, which might come later Let's say a month or two or a year or three later, people in that space, those are the most prime targets for false teachers because they're not truly converted. They're naive. And what Peter's arguing is like, hey, we want to look out for them so that they can stay in the fellowship and then go on to hopefully true salvation.

But these false teachers are disrupting them. They're disrupting households. They're tearing people's faith apart and cause people to turn away from not true faith because they didn't have it yet. But what might have otherwise become true faith. And we don't know in the sovereign plan of God, which is which.

So, what we want is for people who are on that path. We want to keep them in and to help them to grow and to understand the truth. So, in this period of time, people are vulnerable. And so, we want to help them to truly follow Christ because if they fall away, Peter says, be better if they never came, because if they fall away in that state, man is really hard.

Now we do know, I know specific cases where that has happened, but it's very difficult. It's very difficult. Regardless. What do we do? We know what to do. Confess our sin. We repent of our sin. We believe in the Lord Jesus Christ for forgiveness of sin. Receive his grace. We follow him. We do not stray from that path.

That's the Christian life. Next week we'll finish up the series with practical counsel on how to grow in discernment. Let's pray. Our Father and our God, we thank you that your word is so vivid in what it tells us. And some of these topics are just complicated. Amen. The doctrine of salvation and conversion is complicated.

Lord, I pray that you will impress upon our hearts the truth of scripture. I pray that you will teach us, Lord, and help us to understand more fully the truth of God. And for anybody here that is on this path of becoming a Christian, I pray, Lord, that you will keep them on that path and that you will truly bring them to salvation.

Give them conversion, true, genuine faith in Christ for all of us. Lord, may we delight in the goodness of God, delight in the grace of God, and thank you for your mercy that you've saved us, protect us from false teachers and false teaching. Lord, we thank you, Jesus. We praise you for your sacrifice and ask these things in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Amen