Sermon Tone Analysis

Review of last sermon:

I. Deceptive Intrusion

We looked at the way in which Peter and all the NT writers, most importantly, Jesus himself identifies the deceptive qualities of False prophets and teachers.

They are called wolves…in sheep clothing or as we laid out last time, they are psuedo-didaskos (teachers of falsehood).

When Paul gives a list of pastors in 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1, he begins with their character as the hallmark of their service to the church.

They are to be blameless, which is not perfect, but one striving for truth and integrity in their service to God and his people.

False teachers are characterized as the opposite as they deceive the masses.

II.

Deviating Loyalty

Secondly, we looked at the status of these false teachers.

Were they believers who had stumbled into sin?

Or were they unbelievers who were seeking to do harm and lead others astray?

The problematic passage leaves many confused and I hope I was able to make the phrase “denying the Master who bought them” more clear.

I explained how that verse cannot mean that the Lord Jesus atoned for the sins of false teachers only to watch them turn from him into destruction.

This interpretation has to then mean the same as what John describes in 1 John 2:19

Therefore as unbelievers, we can understand that the focus and attention of false teachers is too deceive because they serve not the Lord Jesus, but their serve Satan and his purposes.

III.

Destructive Practices 1b, 2-3

The third observation about false teachers is to see their strategy.

How do they go about accomplishing their goals of evil?

For the church to be protected, Peter lays out their diagram of deception and distortion of God’s work.

1. Teaching that destroys you

Remember the warning from Peter in his first letter that Satan roams around like a hungry lion seeking to devour.

But he devours by leading your heart and mind away from the Lord.

Peter states in 1 Peter 5:8 the warning to be alert and sober of mind for the devil is seeking to destroy.

Being alert means that we are watchful of the schemes of Satan because he seeks to destroy.

He attacks your mind and heart in order to draw you away.

Peter uses the word heresy which is an erroneous teaching or doctrine.

He later warns the church in 2 Peter 3:18 to take care that you are not carried away with the error of lawless people and you lose your stability or your footing.

When I wrestled in high school, the point of attack on your opponent who was standing was to go after his footing.

If you were able to get him to the ground, you stood a better chance of victory.

Satan uses false teachers to bring in erroneous teaching to trip you up so that you begin to turn away from the gospel.

These are subtle changes of direction so that you might not notice or others might not notice until its too late.

Let me give you one example: The movement of wokeness is an attack against the gospel.

Let me say from the start that there are genuine helpful aspirations of the movement that seek to fight against prejudice and hate towards others.

I support the fight against prejudice in every way.

Please don’t misunderstand me.

But wokeism as a movement is not helping fight prejudical hatred... its just rebranding it.

As this movement seeks to fight for the rights of certain groups in America, it is actually spreading further hate and acts against others.

Violence has occured in protests.

Looting and destruction against people and their property.

Attacks against children and their parent’s wishes for them.

The biggest threat of wokeness is the distraction from man’s personal responsibility.

Personal responsibility is the key component in understanding the gospel.

When a person understands his personal responsibility before God, then this leads a person to a conviction of sin and that conviction leads to a faith in Christ alone for salvation.

Wokeness does not promote individual responsibility.

It instead promotes corporate guilt.

You are not guilty because you acted as an individual against another individual.

You are guilty because you belong to a certain group of people.

For some, you are guilty because of the color of your skin or the gender to which you were born.

On the other side, if you don’t belong to those labeled groups of oppressors, then you bear no guiltiness.

You are the victim and when you are a victim, then the guilt falls on others, not yourself.

This self-centered victimhood is anti-gospel.

This way of thinking is what leads people away from seeing their personal sin that they are responsible for and their need for repentance and faith in Jesus Christ.

Owen Stachan writes,

“Wokeness judges us without knowing the hidden motives of our heart—knowledge only God possesses (1 Corinthians 4:5).

If you have heard that you are guilty of “white supremacy” simply because of your “whiteness,” you have been falsely convicted and unbiblically indicted.

You do have real sin...

But your skin color and heritage are not inherently sinful.

Such a conclusion is totally foreign to Scripture.

If it were true, entire people groups could never come to Christ.

Yet Scripture revels in a Gospel that saves people from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation.”

(Strachan, Owen.

Christianity and Wokeness: How the Social Justice Movement Is Hijacking the Gospel - and the Way to Stop It (pp.

67-68).

Salem Books.

Kindle Edition.)

What woke ideology does NOT do is it does help societies difficulties, it just reinvents them.

Hate still exists and disunity is still being promoted because man’s ways to heal society never work.

These ideologies like pschiatry (Mr. Adam taught last week, Wokeness, and others) do not deal with the true underlying problem with man-sin.

The only hope is first when hearts of individuals change.

Those individual hearts that change, infect groups who change, which change communities and nations.

These woke teachers are not pointing people to love like Jesus but instead hate like Satan devised!

Peter calls such teaching destructive.

Peter’s use of the adjective “destructive” in v 1, often means annihilation in war, used in NT of Herod when he wants to destroy the baby Jesus.

Similarly, in Matthew’s gospel, the GK Apollymi is used again in 27:3 when the crowd of Jews release Barabbas but want Jesus destroyed.

Paul uses it in 1 Cor 1:18 as to refer to those being destroyed in judgment who reject the gospel.

The destruction of such teaching brings a personal and spiritual annihilation.

Following the teachers who stray from healthy biblical interpretation, tend to lead people to their spiritual doom.

If you leave the biblcal teaching that each of us is responsible for the sin that we commit against a holy God and only our sins, then you will stumble away from the reality that you stand before a holy God with an unimaginable weight of debt from your sin.

Blindness to this means blindness to a need for Christ to save you.

2. Teaching that exploits you

Secondly, Peter states in verse 3 that you will be exploted by false teachers with their lying words.

Exploitation is the GK Emporeomai (emporium) speaks of commercial trade and sales.

You become a commodity to false teachers because their greed for power and money is satisfied by their following.

Mr. Terry Brown blew me away two weeks ago when reading from the Geneva translation which reads,

2 Peter 2:3 (Geneva)

3 And through covetousnes shal they with fained wordes make marchandise of you, ...

That translation seems much more dehumanizing doesn’t it?

You and I are simply articles of commerce to bring in a fair prize for the ones beholding it.

They are operating for profit as a prophet of God.

Peter elaborates further down in the chapter with more powerful words,

2 Peter 2:13–14(ESV)

13 They count it pleasure to revel in the daytime.

They are blots and blemishes, reveling in their deceptions, while they feast with you.

14 They have eyes full of adultery, insatiable(Unending) for sin.

They entice(seduce or bait) unsteady souls.

They have hearts trained in greed.

Accursed children!

Notice the words Peter uses in v 13-14 that speak of self-indulgence and lust for pleasure.

This is the heart of greedy sin.