The Siren's Song

2nd Peter chapter 2, we're going to start in verse 10, the second half of verse 10.
If you're new to Christianity, sometimes when you talk about verse references, you'll say 10A or 10B, but that just means it's the second half.
Don't look for the little B on the verse reference.
It's the second half of verse 10.
As you turn there, let me remind you where we are.
in second Peter.
Second Peter is a book that Peter wrote at the very end of his life.
Sometime between 64 and 67 AD.
It was a letter he wrote because he knew that he was about to die.
And we know later from church history that he indeed was killed by Emperor Nero.
And Peter wants to remind the people that his message and the message of the apostles is the true message of the gospel.
Because there are people who came in to the churches of Asia minor, incredibly persuasive people who said, "What the apostles told you is not true.
They just made it up." And so at the very end of chapter one, Peter addresses that objection.
And then he addresses a second objection in chapter two.
And the objection was that, "Listen, God is not really going to bring a final judgment." And you heard Pastor Nathan talk about that last week.
He gives three examples in church history of how God God did in the Old Testament, how God did indeed bring a judgment and how he will one day again when he comes again to make all things new and judge the living and the dead.
There's a third objection which I'll talk about next week, but the passage that we're about to read is a passage where he describes the false teachers and he describes their moral conduct.
And so, if you are willing and able, would you give ear to God's as we read from 2nd Peter chapter 2 beginning at verse 10.
Would you stand with me as we read God's word together?
I'll read from verse 10 uh down through verse uh 22.
This is God's word and it's given to you in love.
Please give your attention to it.
Bold and willful, they do not tremble as they blaspheme the glorious ones.
Whereas angels, though greater in might and power, do not pronounce a blasphemous judgment against them before the Lord.
But these, like irrational animals, creatures of instinct, born to be caught and destroyed, blaspheming about matters of which they are ignorant, will also be destroyed in their destruction.
suffering wrong as the wage for their wrongdoing.
They count it pleasure to revel in the daytime.
They are blots and blemishes, reviling in their deceptions while they feast with you.
They have eyes full of adultery, insatiable for sin.
They entice unsteady souls.
They have hearts tamed, trained in greed, accursed children.
Forsaking the right way they have gone astray.
They have followed the way of Balaam, the son of Beor, who loved, gained from wrong doing, but was rebuked for his own transgression.
A speechless donkey spoke with human voice and restrained the prophet's madness.
These are waterless springs and mists driven by a storm.
For them the gloom of utter destruction or 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 outcomes overcomes the 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 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 vomit and The sow after washing herself returns to wallow in the mire.
The grass withers and the flowers fade that God's word stands forever.
This is the word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God.
You may be seated, please.
Do you remember the first time that you were lost?
I couldn't have been more than four or five years old.
And my mother took me to the grocery store in my hometown it was called Safeway.
And so we went to the store as we would often do.
I as her little buddy going shopping for the family and I knew as a young child like many of you know and you young kiddos you know this too that not all shopping carts are created equal are they?
And so one of the shopping carts that my mother picked had one of those wobbly wheels that kind of vibrates as you go down the rows of your grocery store And it was uncomfortable.
And I probably complained or was crying about it and so she picked me up and she put me down next to her to hang on to the shopping cart as we walked down the aisle.
And I don't know if it was in the cereal aisle or the spaghetti aisle, I don't really remember those details but what I do remember is they looked up and my mother was not there.
And I remember looking around that Safeway aisle and looking for my mother.
And to my relief, I found her.
And I ran down the aisle and I grabbed onto her leg and I was so relieved and I looked up and it was not my mother's face.
You know that feeling?
Some of the you have had that same experience that "She looked like my mother, she even sounded like my mother, she sort of smelt like my mother and I grabbed her." And what Peter's trying to teach us in second Peter chapter two is that there are people, oh they will look like our mother.
They will even have a gait like our mothers.
They will walk like our mothers.
They may even sound like our mothers, but when you look at their face, you recognize "This is not my mother." And friends, Peter is very adamant about reminding the churches of Asia Minor that there are people amidst the church for them that had crept in, that had begun to teach something that was different than the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Oh, they used the same words.
Oh, they talked in the same kind of way.
But they began to doubt certain doctrines of God.
They began to undercut their authority and then their lives splayed open just reasonabled a totally different lifestyle than those who really are bought with the blood of Jesus.
And so Peter teaches us in this passage that false teachers promote a kind of freedom that further enslaves and leads to their own destruction.
And he does so in three movements in this passage as he describes these false leaders and as we look up and we recognize that this is not the face of our mother.
We notice first in verses 10 down through 12 that there is a kind of speech of reverence, a speech of irreverence in these false teachers.
Look at the text with me.
Notice, it says, "Bold and willful, they do not tremble." And then there's a word that he uses three times, "blaspheme." To blaspheme, what does blaspheme mean?
It means to speak with irreverence.
Verses 12 through 16 in in Greek are all one sentence, and so these are just participial phrases, just piled upon each other.
We have to break it down in English into sentences to make sense of it.
But Paul's I mean, Peter's Here, is that there's a speech of irreverence.
That's one of the first marks of false teachers.
Bold and willful, reckless, and as self-pleasers, stubborn and will, they, the false teachers, do not tremble, as they blaspheme the glorious ones.
Now, Peter is talking here of the glorious ones referring to bad angels.
There's different views of what he means here, but the predominant view is that these are bad angels.
And if these false teachers.
They They have the hubspot to condemn these evil angels.
They give themselves the appearance of looking good.
They blasting these evil angels.
Whereas good angels, verse 11, whereas angels, good angels, though greater in might and power than the false teachers, they don't pronounce a blasphemous judgment against the evil angels even before the Lord.
So, these false teachers are very confident.
They sound bold, they sound confident, they are the kind of people that people tend to follow.
They're blaspheming evil things, but in their blaspheming, there's a height of arrogance that Peter says that oh listen for their irreverent speech.
Blaspheme, blaspheme.
And again in verse 12, you see the word blaspheme again.
But These false teachers, they are like irrational animals, creatures of instinct, born to be caught and destroyed, blaspheming, same Greek word, about matters of which they are ignorant.
They will also be destroyed in their destruction.
Again, Peter is is the play on words in Greek, they will be destroyed in their destruction.
The translators of the ESV try to communicate this.
several times in this passage, you'll see it as they are trying to alliterate these words that also alliterate in Greek.
They are destroyed in their destruction.
So they have speech that is irreverent.
Point number one.
Mark number one.
Mark number two.
Look at verses 13 through 16.
There's a stain of corruption in their life.
There is a stain of corruption.
Suffering wrong, again a word play, suffering wrong as the wage for their wrongdoing.
They counted the pleasure to rebel in the daytime.
Peter addresses the situation where they had taken Paul, you'll see this later in the book where Peter says there are even some things Paul writes that are hard to understand, no doubt.
They take Paul particularly in in Romans chapter 6 and they said, "Well, let grace abound if Jesus forgives us of all sin." And so they live with a kind of licentiousness that is unbecoming of one who calls himself a Christian.
They rebel in the daytime.
They say, "Listen, it's okay, it's okay to be greedy.
It's okay like greed is good." As Gordon Gekko once said in the 80s.
They take on as adulterers, other women who are not their own.
They are sexually promiscuous.
All in the name of grace.
Grace covers our sin.
And Peter goes after him.
He says, "They pleasure to rebel in the daytime.
They are also blots and blemishes." That's an interesting phrase, isn't it?
Because in first Peter, his first book in chapter 1:19 He says, that we and our righteousness, we are covered right by the perfect righteousness of Jesus, the lamb of God without blot or blemish.
Paul is in the same language here in 2nd Peter chapter 2.
Reviling in their uh reveling in their deceptions while they feast with you.
They're people who are among them.
They're in the church.
They're in your community group.
They're They're people who are just just slightly taking people a different direction.
Not people who are learning about the gospel, humbled, learning, growing in their own sanctification, of which we all are on different tracks, and progress, not perfection, is the key there.
But these are people who are intentionally taking and pulling people away from the gospel.
There's a stain of corruption.
They have eyes that are full of adultery.
There's a reference to their sexual promiscuity, insatiable for sin.
They entice unsteady souls.
That's a fishing image.
They try to hook.
This is not hard to imagine coming from a fisherman himself, Peter.
They try to hook unsteady souls.
They have hearts that are trained like they would train their young men in the gym.
They are trained not in righteousness, but they are trained in agreed.
They are accursed children.
These are people who have grown up in the church.
They may have even been baptized.
They are part of the visible covenant family and yet clearly they are missing the heart of the gospel.
I wonder if there are those among us here.
He said accursed children which is covenant language.
We baptized children, we baptized them and we pronounced the promises of God over them and to be beautiful thing that when the condition of those promises are met, that is their faith.
All of those covenant blessings become that child's.
But if they don't believe that all those covenant curses become that child just like the rest of the world.
So here they are accursed children, not walking in light of God's covenant promises.
Forsaking the right way, they have gone astray.
Do you just see he's just like this is all one verse in Greek.
He's just keeping participial phrases all over him.
Eyes full of adultery and insatiable for sin, enticing unsteady souls, trained hearts in greed, accursed children, forsaking the right way, they have gone astray, following the ways of Balaam, the son of Beor, that he Peter's just on a role.
The story of Balaam is in Numbers chapter 22.
You can read about that.
that.
It's about when Israel came into the plains of Moab when they crossed the Jordan.
And the king of Moab was nervous and so he sent his prophet Balaam.
King Balak sent Balaam over to prophesy against Israel.
And so as Balaam was going to prophesy, you remember the story?
He was riding on a donkey, remember?
And as he was going, the the the angel of the Lord appeared and the donkey saw the angel and the donkey stopped.
And so Balaam struck his donkey.
And then he he saw the angel again against the ravine and crushed Balaam's foot and Balaam struck the donkey.
And then again the donkey saw the angel a third time and he sat down.
And Balaam to read about this in Numbers 22, he struck the donkey again and the donkey talked.
And the donkey said, "Would you stop it?" "Have I not been your donkey all of your life and ever mistreated you?
Why are you hitting me?" And shocked, Balaam then saw the angel of the Lord.
But Peter uses Balaam as an example of one who loved gain from wrong doing.
He was rebuked for his own transgression.
His own stubbornness, he refused to hear the word of the Lord.
And so a donkey had to remind him of God's word.
A speechless donkey spoke with human voice and restrained the prophet for his madness.
Now, there's a stain of corruption in these false teachers.
You get the picture.
And whenever you hear the Bible preached about the stains of corruption, we almost always assume that it's talking about somebody else.
But would you be so willing as to consider are you the one who is playing God's grace back to his face which he will not stand for.
It is not uncommon for there to be false teachers in a church of any size especially a church of our size.
So we have to have eyes to see where there is speech of a reverence or there is a of corruption that begins to trickle in.
Thirdly, in verses 17 through 19, he says, not just what they do, but now he's he talks about what they offer.
They offer empty promises, verses 17 through 19.
The emptiness of their promises.
These are waterless springs, that is they bring no hope.
If you see If you see a spring in the desert, immediately you have hope, you just run to it.
and then you find when it has no water, your hopes are dashed.
That's like the promises that these false teachers make.
They are mists driven by a storm.
They provide you no relief.
For them, the gloom of utter darkness has been reserved.
For here's the here's the instrument of their methods.
Speaking loud boasts of folly, remember back up in verse 10 and 11 and 12.
Speaking loud boasts of folly, they entice by sensual passions of the flesh, those who are are barely escaping from those who live in error.
In other words, they pick off the most vulnerable ones first.
And so community group leaders heads up.
Like you're not just a community group leader, you're also a shepherd of that community group in a very important way.
As you listen to people process the gospel and apply it to their life, you have ears to hear.
I actually don't think that the gospel leads you to do that.
Are your community groups the kind of places where you can have beautiful, healthy conflict in a way that drives people back to the foot of the cross of Jesus to make his work for us even more beautiful so that our lives are led in a way that is so much more deeply joyful for his glory and for our good.
They promised them freedom, but they themselves are slaves to corruption.
For whatever overcomes a person to that, he is enslaved.
Do you remember the illustration I've used it before of the way Eskimos used to catch wolves, classic illustration, many of you know it.
For those who don't, it's the story of these Eskimos who would take a piece of meat and slip in a blade in the meat and they would freeze the block, the meat in a block of ice.
They would set it down and the wolves would they would smell the meat, they would come to the raw meat and they would begin to lick.
And they would lick through that ice and they would get to that meat and their tongues would hit the blades within that meat.
And they wouldn't be able to tell if the blood that they were tasting is the raw meat itself or it's their own blood and they would just keep licking and licking and licking until they got weaker and weaker and weaker and they would bleed out and the eskimos would kill wolves that way.
This is what Peter is saying happens to the false teachers.
They are destroyed by their own destruction.
The wages with which they earn their wickedness will keep back on their own head.
Whatever overcomes the person to that, he is enslaved.
For after they've escaped the defilements of the world through the entanglements, through the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and they are overcome and their last state is worse for them than it was at the beginning.
Why?
Because they have seen the beauty of what God calls us to be and yet they have turned their back.
Doesn't mean they lost their salvation.
It means they never trusted the gospel in the first place even though they were part of the visible community of faith through baptism.
Peter's is going Adam.
Are you with me?
Do you see Are you with me in the text?
Do you see how Peter was just trying to identify the speech of a reverence, the stain of corruption, the emptiness of their promises.
And then lastly, he says in verses 20 through 22, "There is a tragedy of their returning, same old pattern." They turned back from what they once knew.
The tragedy of returning The proverb is true of them.
The dog returns to its own vomit, which is from the passage that Brad read earlier from Proverbs chapter 26.
And then he uses another well-known proverb, whether it comes from Heraclitus or it's unknown an unknown source we don't exactly know.
Scholars don't know where he gets it, but it was undoubtedly a well-known proverb.
That's a saw after after washing herself returns to wallow in the mire, the pig goes back to the mud.
So Peter is trying to remind us that there are false teachers that they promise a freedom that further enslaves and leads to their own destruction.
Now, I'm going to take a few minutes and I just want to meddle in your life just for a minute.
One of the struggles that we have as believers is that if you are not constantly being overwhelmed with the beauty of the gospel, you become so susceptible to other gospels.
And we try to integrate it into every aspect of life of this church in a thousand ways so that you turn the diamond of the gospel and you see different refractions of Jesus, his omniscience, his asceticism, his personal knowledge of you as a sinner, and he covers you with his blood and welcomes you into his father's kingdom with love and joy and care and faithfulness.
He knows every anxiety of your heart.
Thomas Watson, who lived in the 1780s, born in the 1780s and died in 1847, I believe, Watson was a Scottish pastor.
He was probably the most prolific Scottish pastor that existed until that day.
He wrote a very famous this article, it was a sermon called the explosive power of a new affection.
And what Thomas at Chalmers, rather not Watson, Chalmers says is that if you're going to be able to walk in light of the gospel, you can't just withdraw from what is evil.
You have to fill it with the beauty of the gospel of grace.
It's not what you're against, it's what you're for.
Chalmers says that you have to exchange an old affection for for a new one.
Such is the grasping tendency of the human heart that it must have something to lay hold of and which if wrestled away without the substitution of another something in its place would leave a void and a vacancy as painful to the mind as hunger is to the natural system, the explosive power of a new affection.
There is a ancient Greek story called the Golden Fleece.
Some of you may remember this old story.
It's the story of Jason.
Jason was raised by by Chiron after he raised Hercules, before he raised Achilles.
And Jason wants to take over the kingdom that his uncle had taken away, King Peleus.
And King Peleus says, "If you go and get the golden fleece, then you can take my kingdom, which was an impossible task.
And so Jason, you know, grabs the the Argonauts, the heroes of the day, and they take off on the sailing vessel to find the golden fleece.
And once they recapture the golden fleece, they're coming back.
They're coming back to celebrate that they have actually conquered this golden fleece.
And they go by the island where the sirens are.
And the sirens are these people who are with beautiful music.
They lure the sailors into the rocks of their island and to destroy all the sailors.
They captivate the sailors' imaginations with beautiful art and they sing.
And as they're traveling by this island, the only way that they know guys are starting to put their oars down and they're starting to drift toward the island and Orpheus Orpheus, the musician of the group, picks up his lute and he begins to play a more beautiful song, a song of their journeys together to the Golden Fleece, a song that tells them that the of their accomplishments that that they have been so humble to be a part of.
He sings their story louder than the sirens song and all but one of the men in the boat.
They put their oars down and their imaginations explode with this more beautiful music and it drowns out the sirens song for all in the boat except for one who jumps out to swim to sea and they yell at him don't go.
And for us as a church we have to sing the beauty of the gospel that the Lord your God is in your midst.
Hallelujah.
He is mighty to save.
He rejoices over you with gladness.
That is in the Bible.
Somebody said, "Is that in the Bible?" Yes, it's in Zephaniah 3:17.
Some of you, I won't say who have it as a license plate in this church, it is a promise of God.
He loves you because he loves you and he set his affection upon you.
And he He is redeeming you from this fallen world and as we'll see next week, he is making all things new and it is beautiful and you are invited into that.
And isn't it so loving of him to know all of your anxieties and yet still he comes to you in the midst of your anxieties and your fears and your sins and he says, "I know you." Yes, you.
And I have a plan for you.
And As Peter was writing this book, he was an old old man and he knew that he wouldn't live any longer.
And I in thinking about this sermon, I wondered, huh, like if if our session was taken out, if we died or we moved on, what are the false stories that this church might might believe because like all good Orthodox churches, we tend to hear siren songs that become really attractive.
And so I said I was going to medal for a second.
So here it goes.
You ready?
Email me all you want.
The Duke at Trinity of also.
Okay?
Number one.
If it lowers reverence, normalizes corruption, flatters grievances, or avoids accountability, and promises freedom without holiness.
Second Peter 2 says, "Don't drink from that spring.
What fruit does it produce?" So first, there's a lot of talk right now about political salvation.
Real Christians, real Christians will tend to always vote this way.
Or the church's main mission right now is to take the country back.
And if you disagree, you're not just wrong, but you're evil.
Now, there is truth in every statement, no doubt about it, but listen to the contempt.
Guard your hearts.
Does it produce reverence, prayer, love for enemies, or does it produce deep seated contentment?
Contempt.
Number two, license as grace.
This is the most direct application from second Peter.
We say, listen, we we Jesus forgives.
This won't really be damage you.
P*** is not that big of a deal you hear the false teachers say to you.
Yes, it is.
Men, it's killing some of your marriages.
Please, get help.
You won't be able to do it on your own.
And there's a lot of dudes in this room who struggle with it.
So, let's talk about it.
Some of you couples have had sexless marriages for a long, long time.
Sorry, I'm going to meddle.
And when that happens, you begin to justify in.
I deserve it.
And people run outside of their marriage for satisfaction.
These subtle siren calls play the more beautiful story.
The question is, does the freedom offer loosened sin grip or tighten it?
Almost every the staggering statistics about how many men and women have draft King's apps on their phone or use, you know, they they y'all may even have bet when I'll end the sermon.
I mean the the betting industry right now is making scads of money off of your time as you give into addictive tendencies to bet on everything from NCAA football games to basketball games to life guard your heart.
Just like pornography, gambling can become incredibly addictive.
And if you think you don't have a problem with it and you still do it, oh brother, you probably have a problem with it.
And there's no shame in it, but it's we're here to help you walk through it.
Because Peter offers you a more beautiful song, a song of joy.
Or kind of a conspiracy spirituality that has taken the world by storm.
I've done the research, everybody's an expert.
Don't trust anybody else.
They're all lying.
Our side is clearly the right one.
And if you question this, you're part of the cover up.
Does it cultivate a kind of sobriety, a truth, a patience, or is it kind of an addiction to suspicion or outrage?
There's also a kind of self-centered masculinity and femininity that's going around the churches these days.
Have you noticed that?
Or if you say, show yourself to be a man or a woman and these particular ways in your marriage will be better.
Domination, don't ever lose.
Don't look weak.
Your spouse is the main problem.
If you just You're justified to have a hard heart.
You blame shift.
Does it form Christ-like humility in you?
Does it deepen your sacrifice, your love, or does it lead to pride, manipulation, or blame?
I can go on and on and on.
I've got like 10.
You know what they are?
Celebrity pastors or podcast discipleship.
Pastoring not through the local church, but now somehow entertaining you through teaching that disassociate you from community.
That's a real danger.
We have to guard our hearts against that.
Nothing wrong with learning, of course.
Learn, learn, learn, learn, learn.
I'll learn all you can, but you bring it back to the community because that's where it's shaped into a gospel-centered beautiful way where the fruit gives license to bloom in a thousand ways in your life.
This prosperity consumeristic faith, the therapeutic moralism of our day, 19th whole kind of Christianity.
I'll go to church once a month.
I got a tea time at 9:00.
I I just can't change it.
There's got I'll I'll slow my other guys down.
So you end up like not coming to church as often.
Then listen, I'm not beating you up if this is you, but I'm just saying there was a beauty in the in coming to worship every week.
It shapes you in a ways that you are not intellectually able to grasp because it forms your heart.
And everything about you says there's a thousand reasons to miss.
And so, surely we all get to miss at times.
There's no doubt about it.
But come lean into worship, see it as a non-negotiable as a way to shepherd your family and shepherd your heart.
There's a separation spirituality where it says don't be around sinners or those people.
There's all kinds of subtle practical moralism that creeps into the church.
This is the kind of subtle false teaching.
And in your community groups this week, there's an opportunity for you to share what other potential false teachings abound in Tulsa, Oklahoma and might take you captive.
There are truths, good truths in each of those things that I've mentioned.
But it is the over indulgence.
It is the over desires of these things that somehow trump the gospel in your mind and allow you to live by a different story that actually is empty of all of its promises.
And there is as you return to that again and again and again, there's kind of a tragic return to the same sense of emptiness in your own heart like a wolf licking through the ice to find the meat with a blade in it and you're slowly losing strength and you don't know why, maybe it's because you're licking the wrong story.
And we as a church want to bring you back again and again and again to God's word taught expositionally so that you see ourselves as the first century church would see you.
Because there are days when you look up and you feel lost.
And there are days when you think you hear your mother's voice and you run down the aisle and you grab onto that leg thinking that you have found comfort.
And when you raise your eyes to see and it's not her face.
Don't go home with that lady.
She is not your mother.
The gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ given to the local church becomes your mother.
I'm not just saying not even this church.
Some of your visitors here.
But a church with a gospel is preached, an Orthodox Christian doctrine is proclaimed, and that always means it is not about your behavior, it is about Jesus's behavior on your behalf.
And that therefore changes your behavior.
Hallelujah.
Let's guard our hearts.
False teachers, promise of freedom that further enslaves and leads to their own destruction, may be run back to the only one who offers true freedom because he himself was crucified on the cross and rose on the third day for us.
Let's pray together.
Father, would you help us to be so confident in your finished work for us that we constantly hear the better song amidst the sirens playing as we go by these islands.
Our lives are not satisfied by money, possessions.
Our lives are satisfied ultimately in you.
Our lives are not satisfied in pleasure or indulgence or sacrifice even.
Our lives are satisfied in you.
So Lord, would you help us to find our rest in you?
You're the only one who can satisfy us.
Would you show us the false teachers that are in our midst and would you dare be so loving to us to help us recognize our own tendencies to be lured away by the false teachers and should there be any false teachers in our midst oh Lord would you protect us and give our session the strength to identify, protect, guard this church so that it is not taken captive by empty philosophy or hallowed living but by hallowed living in light of the finished work of your son, the Lord Jesus Christ.
As we give him our tithes and offerings, Father, we pray that you will help us to do so as children who are blessed and delight in all the resources you've allotted to us to steward for your glory.
We pray these things in Jesus name.
Amen.

Sermon transcript is computer generated.