It is good to see all of you today. Hopefully, you will stick around for the potluck after the next service.

I assume I'd have to go and wander around Clifton for a while. But after the 11 a.m. service we have a potluck that we'll be enjoying together. Hopefully we get to see you there. We are working our way through the book of 2 Peter and in second Peter chapter two, which is where we are now, we're doing a little mini-series about discernment because that is what this chapter largely deals with false teachers and that sort of thing.

Last week there were two things that I mentioned, and that is we need to discern false teachers and false teaching. And so that will be woven. throughout the next the next two sermons. And these are always important because God calls us as his people to be holy, which means set apart from the world.

We're to be in the world, but not of the world. So, we're holy and there are different ways that we can. Get off target. So, there's Doug Wilson is a pastor that he makes a distinction between two different kinds of people that would be part of a church that aren't believers. So, two different kinds of unbelievers or two types of people from the world that would be in a church.

They said, you have some people that are refugees from the world, and then you have apostles from the world. So, two different kinds of people here. Refugees from the world, these are people that are, they're not believers, but they come because they want to learn about God, and they want to hear about the gospel, they want to learn the Bible, to, and then they'll hear about how to repent of sin and to be forgiven and to find new life in Christ.

So, we always welcome refugees from the world. That's ordinary hospitality, that's Christian mission using hospitality in our church family. The other kind of person is apostles from the world. And apostles from the world are people who enter into the church, or they get involved in the life of the church in order to change it.

They want to update it, they want to fix it because there's something they see that's wrong and they think they have the perspective to, to fix what's wrong with it. And to make the messaging or whatever of the church more conducive to what they prefer. And we don't welcome them. We don't welcome apostles from the world into the church because they're here not to be changed, but to be the agents of change.

They're the ones who are affecting the change and they're spreading their ideas and their teaching within the church. Oftentimes they're not Christians at all. They don't know the Lord, but they think that they are. They think that they're Christians, even though many of them may not be. Perhaps most of the time they're not.

And not only do they think they're Christians, they might even think that they're the best Christians. Because they're arrogant enough to think that they know better than the ones that are running the church what it should be about. And I think of them, apostles from the world, like carriers of an infection.

And the infection is a spiritual infection. It's an error. It's a doctrinal error that can infiltrate the body through a person and then it spreads around to other people. And as it spreads, Christians who are not as discerning. Will get the infection because they'll be persuaded by what the other person teaches, right?

So, they're hearing things and the things that they're hearing from these apostles from the world sound plausible At least it, it appeals to them for some, and for some reason. So, the more people that get the infection, the more plausible the false teaching sounds because it's now not just one guy or one girl that's teaching it, but now it's there's this, there's several groups of people.

It's, there's a percentage of the people that, that believe this thing. And so, it spreads and the more it spreads, the more plausibility it gains and the more plausibility it gains, the more it can spread even further. So, the error is easiest to treat when it's small, if it's one or two people. You see it and you're like, hey, there's an error there and you can correct it.

It's harder to treat as it spreads. It's harder to treat if it infects a whole church. And it can infect very large numbers of people if it isn't dealt with, if it isn't treated early. So, in the book of 2 Timothy chapter 2, the Apostle Paul talks about false teachers and their teaching spreads like gangrene.

I googled it this morning to see what does that look like? And it's gross. That's not something you want to have happen in the church. So what Paul was talking about was a very bad thing. A very vivid thing that we don't want to happen. We don't want teaching to spread to different parts of the body and it turns like fingers and toes black, and they rot.

It's really disgusting. Don't look it up unless you're, especially if you're about to eat a meal, but it's just, it's really gross. But the thing is that this, as it spreads, it leads to more and more ungodliness. That's the language Paul uses in 2 Timothy 2. So, what false teachers do is they infiltrate churches, or they may grow platforms or start parachurch ministries or podcasts or publish books, but the effect is always the same.

The effect is people become more ungodly. That's where we're headed today. So, let's dig in. We're going to be in 2 Peter chapter 2. And we'll cover verses 4 through 16, but let's read, I'll read verses 4 through 10 right now. Verse 4. Here we go. For, so this is a really long, complicated sentence, but I want to highlight a few things here to make it a little bit easier to follow along.

For if God did not spare angels when they sinned but cast them into hell and committed them to chains of gloomy darkness to be kept until the judgment. If he did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a herald of righteousness with seven others, when he brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly, if by turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes, he condemned them to extinction, making them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly.

And if he rescued righteous lot, greatly distressed by the sensual conduct of the wicked. For as that righteous man lived among them day after day, he was tormenting his righteous soul over their lawless deeds that he saw and heard. Then, two things. Number one. Ah, this always happens when I use. Then, number one.

The Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials. And two, ha, did it again, this one I'm left-handed, you got that hook, and it messes this up. Alright, so number one, the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials, and two, the Lord knows how to keep the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgment, and especially those who indulge in the lust of defiling passion and despise authority.

We'll stop here for a second. Complicated sentence, right? There's a lot going on here, that's all one sentence. But there's, the point is very simple, and the point is here at the end. God will judge the wicked, and God will deliver the righteous. God will judge the wicked, God will deliver the righteous. So, let's talk for a minute about the word righteous, because that word can be a little confusing.

There's a couple different ways that we can think about this word. We, Christians, we don't usually speak of other Christians as the righteous because we know we're not righteous. We know that there's none righteous, no not one. And so, we're hesitant to use that language. Jesus says there's no one good but God alone.

So, we don't want to speak of one another as righteous, but the Bible does. And there's a good reason for it, and I'll explain that as we go here. Romans 3:10, the Apostle Paul says, there's none righteous, no not one. And then then Peter. Paul repeats this, there's not a single righteous man, so there's none righteous, no not one.

So, he repeats it for emphasis, there's not a single righteous man or woman. No one is righteous, no not one. Then Peter, he mentions the word righteous four times. Noah is a herald of righteousness. He's not calling Noah a righteous man, so he's proclaiming something righteous. But then, in verse 7, he talks about Lot, and he says Lot is righteous.

So here, we got three instances of this. God rescued righteous Lot, greatly distressed by the sensual conduct of the wicked. For as that righteous man lived among them day after day, he was tormenting his righteous soul over their lawless deeds. What's going on here? Contradiction? Atheist, checkmate!

Error in your Bible. There you go. Not so fast because it's not a contradiction if we understand how the Bible is put together and the theology that is undergirding their argument. They're not contradiction. So, on our own, none of us, not a person in this room, is righteous before God. We've all sinned.

We've all fallen short of the glory of God. That is true. That's what Paul is talking about. However, by faith in Jesus Christ, we will be counted as righteous through faith. This is said in Genesis about Abraham. Abraham believed God and it was counted or credited to him as righteousness. And then based on that, Paul makes similar arguments in the New Testament, the book of Romans and the book of Galatians.

So, Galatians 3:6 says, Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness. Now, whenever we read the story of Lot, if you read, in the book of Genesis, you read Lot and you're like, he doesn't seem all that righteous. He's a, at best, he's a conflicted character. At worst, he's a wicked man.

And that would be how we would read Genesis. So that's, that creates tension because Lot, his character in Genesis is, we see him do wicked things. Now, it's beyond the scope of this sermon to unpack all that might be indicated here by righteous Lot and all that he did. But let me just say simply this. The best commentary on the Old Testament is the New Testament.

So if the New Testament says, Righteous Lot, Righteous Man, Righteous Soul, and you read Genesis and you don't see Righteousness in Lot, then that doesn't mean there's a contradiction or Peter got it wrong, that means There may be, probably, there are things that we don't know or understand about Lot that may not be written in the book of Genesis directly, but is nevertheless preserved by Peter because he's inspired by the Holy Spirit to speak everything that is true.

So, he's not following a cleverly devised myth, he's not making it up as he goes. He said righteous man, righteous soul, righteous lot. He said it three different times, which. clues us into the fact that there's something more to the story of Lot than what may meet the eye at first glance. So, what we can know is that everybody that you meet, everybody in this room, or a mixture of good qualities and bad qualities, and that includes false teachers.

False teachers will have good qualities and bad qualities. Nobody is monolithically, absolutely wicked or utterly perfect. Nobody is either. We're a mixture. God alone has perfect discernment. God alone sees all things perfectly. He sees all realities just as they are. And Peter is speaking not from his own point of view, but he's being carried along by the Holy Spirit, right?

That's what chapter 1 verse, I think, 16 says. He's carried along by the Spirit. So, Peter is speaking prophetically. He is communicating to us from a human mouth, God's point of view. So, we see from Peter, God's perspective about what? And God sees things that we don't know. And God and Peter's communicating things that we may not see.

The righteous. These people are not perfect. They're not people that you would say they're perfect in every way. People that the Bible calls the righteous could be people that have great big sins. And Lot has great big sins. Nevertheless, he is counted as righteous by faith. And that's the whole concept of salvation by faith.

We are saved by faith. Nobody's perfect, people with big sins even, will be counted righteous by faith. Now, the wicked, on the other hand, they don't have fangs. They're not these blood sucking vampires that, that, that are obvious. Now a lot of times they have very good qualities. They may be very nice people, but they are wicked because they lack faith.

Their wickedness is counted to them as it is. Their wickedness is counted as wickedness because they don't have faith in God through Jesus Christ or faith in God's promises in the Old Testament. They don't have faith that would be reckoned to them as righteousness. So, Lot did wicked things, but the New Testament assessment of his life is righteous based on legitimate, true faith that he had.

Otherwise, Peter would not have said these things. Here's where discernment comes in. We need to discern not only God's word, but also discern the world, right? And one of the most common heresies is to twist up what I've been talking about here. It is to abuse grace and turn the grace of God into a license to sin.

That is one of the most common errors that is always present in every age, is turning the grace of God into a license to sin. So, on the one hand, grace abounds to the chief of sinners. That's, Paul talks about himself as the chief of sinners in 2 Timothy, and John Bunyan wrote a book, a classic book, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners.

Bunyan was a man who had done great evils in his day. On the one hand, God's grace abounds to all sinners that have faith in Christ. But on the other hand, grace does not enable one to remain the chief of sinners. Grace catches us where we are and turns us around so that we will become more godly and less wicked over time.

Romans chapter 1, Paul says, shall we continue in sin so that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? We need to discern that difference. We need to discern the difference between grace for sin, which is true, not grace to sin, which is false. False grace leads to more and more ungodliness.

It robs people of the hope that God will set them free from the sin that's held them captive. True grace leads to more and more godliness, repentance, obedience. It enables us to pursue the righteousness in our lives that we already possess.

Back to Peter's main point. God will judge the wicked and will deliver the righteous. And he illustrates it with three Old Testament examples, and I'll run through them quickly here. He mentions three judgments and two deliverances. And the first two judgments are linked together. So, the first judgment, or three judgments, but the first two are linked is the wicked angels.

He's talking about the Nephilim story in the Genesis 6. You've heard me preach on that and it's weird but check it out. And then that's linked to the global flood. So those two judgments are together. And then the next judgment is Sodom and Gomorrah and that's Genesis 19. And then he couples those with two divine deliverances during the global flood.

Noah was delivered through the ark and from Sodom and Gomorrah lot was delivered from the destruction of Sodom. In those two cases. God's righteous men were surrounded by people of exceedingly great wickedness. And God sent catastrophic judgments in both cases upon the wicked while delivering the righteous safely from it.

And so, the point is this. God is consistent. God never changes. God is the same yesterday, today, and forever. And God promises his essential character doesn't change and he promises, Peter says, based on what we've seen God do in the past, therefore, we can expect God to continue to be the same and to do the same in the future.

God always deals with the wicked justly and God always preserves the righteous according to his grace. That's consistent because that's the way God always works. Now the particulars may change in different times and places, but his character doesn't change. His character is always the same. God hates sin.

He always has and He always will. God loves His people. He always has, He always will. That never changes. The God of the Old Testament is the same as the God of the New Testament. The difference is Christ, who is God with us, who came to live among us, and Jesus took upon Himself the judgment that wicked people deserve in His own flesh when He died for us.

And then, for those of us by faith, we trust in the death and judgment that Christ endured on our behalf through faith in Christ. We then are counted righteous because Jesus' death takes our place. He absorbs the wrath of God on our behalf. And now even though we have wickedness, even though we have done wicked things, God counts us righteous through faith.

There's wickedness that is represented in this room, and I've contributed my own share of it, and so have you. We've all done wicked things. So left on our own, no one is righteous. Not one. We're all damned, and we deserve to be. However, because of our faith in Jesus Christ, we are counted righteous. And what does God do with the righteous?

He delivers them from judgment. We will not be judged along with the wicked. He will save us. Now, that doesn't mean in any particular situation that you will that everything will just work out fine. But ultimately in the grand scheme, ultimately, we will be delivered. So that's all the more reason to trust his promises and all the more reason to hate our sin and all the more reason to discern any false teaching or any false teacher that contradicts this basic idea.

We wanted to expose them and warn against them. All right, so I want to give you six characteristics of false teachers. This is what we want to discern, six characteristics of false teachers, and I've got a little prelude here. I'm going to read the text, and then I'll walk through the rest of our text here to show you what Peter says about discerning them.

So, let's read some more of the text here. We're starting in the middle of verse 10. There's a paragraph break in the middle of verse 10. So, verse 10, bold and willful, so he's speaking about false teachers, right? Wicked people. They do not tremble as they blaspheme the glorious ones. Whereas angels, speaking of holy 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, their blots and blemishes, reveling in their deceptions while they feast with you. They have eyes full of adultery, insatiable for sin. They entice unsteady souls. They have hearts 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 gain from wrongdoing, but he was rebuked for his own transgression. A speechless donkey spoke with human voice.

We'll stop here. Spicy words Peter has for these false teachers, right? At first glance, you might read through it. Whenever I first, when I was first starting to study this, I was like, this seems like he's going on a rant. He's Just this vivid language that he uses. But we got to remember, Peter's not speaking from man's point of view.

He's speaking from God's point of view. He's speaking prophetically. He's telling us what God sees in what we might experience as nice people that you'd think, oh, I like that guy. I like her. She's great. That's how we experience people, but from God's Perfect, all wise, all seeing, omniscient point of view.

This is what God sees when he looks on that. John 7:24, Jesus says, do not judge by appearances, outward, but judge with right judgment. Right judgment is always God's point of view, God's perfect perspective. So last week we talked about how false teachers are likable and they're respectable. You're inclined to agree with them because they present themselves in such a, an attractive way.

And because of this, false teachers may often have the biggest ministries. They could have the best-selling books and the most popular podcasts. Names that you would know. And oftentimes, not every time, but oftentimes, the reason why people know their names is because they're so effective at what they do.

So, what we're seeing in this text here is God's point of view. And there are six characteristics, there's more, but I've whittled them down to the things that I think are the top six that I see in this text here, and these are very common, and just one more thing before I go through these, this is not something that false teachers and only false teachers do, these are just sins that are common to any of us.

Even though we're thinking pure, or, primarily in terms of false teachers, these are, you'll see as we go, these are instructive because they could be, we could fall, any of us could fall into these traps and not be necessarily a false teacher. So false teachers are ones that are promoting these sins.

And if at any point you see yourself in what I have to say, repent, believe the gospel, receive the grace of God, and turn away from that sin. That's what we do. All right. Here's the first one. Number one. Number one is they despise authority. False teachers, they despise authority. So, verse 10 and 11. So starting here in the, it's a middle of a sentence here, but he says that false teachers, they indulge in the lust of defiling passion and despise authority.

Verse 11 says that they do not tremble. Meaning there's no fear of God, they don't tremble. Now the word, the glorious one, so they don't tremble as they blaspheme glorious ones. So glorious ones likely refers to evil spirits. So, it might be strange to think of blaspheming something evil, but that's, from my understanding is that is a, that's possible.

It is possible to blaspheme something that is supernatural, something that is like a supernatural entity. And the example he mentions here is they'll blaspheme the glorious ones. So, it's they It's like I've seen in some charismatic Pentecostal circles, it's like we're going to stomp on the devil's face, I want to just kick the devil out of here.

Get out of here. Satan bite the dust. Carmen, Satan bite the dust. Get out of here. If you're not heard of him, don't worry about it. It's this. Treating Satan and the demonic realm in a cartoonish, exaggerated form, and that is, I think that probably is getting close if not violating this idea of blaspheming glorious ones, which is treating as insignificant or inconsequential something that we should take very seriously because it is a great evil, great darkness.

Now, holy angels, they're greater, right? Angels, speaking of greater angels, they're greater in might and power, so they're better than them even still. They do not pronounce a blasphemous judgment against them. The parallel text in the book of Jude, in Jude he says the archangel Michael didn't dispute with the devil about the body of Moses, he just said the Lord rebuke you.

So, the false teachers have this sort of arrogant, this they, they don't fear God. They despise all authority, but their own. And they even claim an authority for themselves, not only over the Bible and over people, but over the spiritual realm, they act as though the authority or the victory of Jesus as it is applied to us, they act as though they just can command that at will.

And that is something to look out for. Certainly, I believe in spiritual warfare, and I believe in, Christians praying against demonic oppression and being involved in those sort of things, but always with a sense of respect for what you're going up against. It's like you're stepping into the ring with Mike Tyson.

Now you got Jesus in your corner, but you don't go in there just cavalierly acting as though you can just, command evil spirits. So, I think that's something to be. just to be pay attention to. So false teachers despise authority and place themselves above all authority except for their own.

Chiefly, the authority they despise is God himself. But as a, as an extension of that, they despise the authority of God's word. So, God's word has utter authority and should be, we should respect it. But false teachers stand over God's word and they question it. They doubt it. They don't show proper respect for it.

Romans 3:18, Paul says, there's no fear of God before their eyes, meaning they don't fear God's authority. They don't fear God's judgment. Satan did this in the garden. He was like, did God really say he questioned God's authority? Question God's word. A very popular and easy expression of this at the most extreme is atheism.

If you deny there's a God, then you deny there's any authority over you that God would have. So, if you deny belief in God, then you can deny submitting to God. So, the result ultimately is they become a God to themselves. And this error, first error of despising authority is directly connected to the next error that I want to point out, and that is arrogance.

So, the second error is they are arrogant. First one, they despise authority. Second one, they are arrogant. Verse 10 says, bold and willful. In the NIV, it's translated bold and arrogant. New American Standard translates itself willed. Christian Standard Bible collapses them into one expression of bold, arrogant people.

But the idea here is that human arrogance is both the cause of and the effect of rejecting God's authority. So, it's connected to the first one. It can, it becomes this perpetuating self-perpetuating phenomena where your arrogance might lead you to reject God's authority. And because you reject God's authority, you see yourself as better because you see yourself as a better, you reject God's authority, and it becomes this self-reinforcing cycle.

And so false teachers are extremely arrogant and they're confident that they alone know the right way and they know the true way, but their confidence does not come from what is written, a proper. Exposition and study and understanding of God's word, but rather probably picking and choosing verses that can be cobbled together to assert something that is not in line with God's word but sounds enough like it would be.

But ultimately their confidence comes from their own opinions, their own experience, their own wisdom. Now, just like in the game of poker, everybody's got a tell, they say these, the arrogance of false teachers, they have a tell, and they fool people oftentimes with an outward appearance of humility.

So, the arrogance is, does not present to our eyes as arrogant. A lot of times the arrogance presents to our eyes as like quite humble. So, they'll mask this inner arrogance with a posturing, a false humility. And the false humility is often in a form of a mild, soft mannered demeanor. So, here's the way it can go sometimes, there are a number of ways, but one way it could go is, let's say you have a Christian teacher or leader, and they want to adopt some liberal position.

That they hadn't held before. So, they're changing a position from a more conservative view to a more liberal, to a more liberal view. And they're going to announce it. You've, if you pay attention, you've probably seen this a number of times. They go the script, or the template goes something like this.

They'll say this false humility. They'll say, I've really been searching the word of God lately. I've searched the scriptures and I've prayed. I've been on my knees and on my face before the Lord seeking God. I want. I want you to show me what you're showing me, what you want me to see, and the Lord gave me a new insight.

Let me tell you the insight that the Lord gave me. And then whatever comes out of that, 90 times out of a hundred is going to be something that is more liberal, less faithful than what they said, what they would have been thought to believe before that. I've seen this so many times, but it's like you mask it with this show of piety.

It's false. It's fake piety, but it presents in such a way that it reels people in to where they're thinking, it's man, what a godly guy. He prayed about that so much. He was searching the scriptures. He did Hebrew and Greek word studies. He like, he said, he knows these words I can't even pronounce.

So like, I trust what he said. I trust what he said. That's how these things go. It's an arrogant perspective. It's bold. It's willful. It's bold, arrogant people. They don't tremble. They don't have this sense of I am under God's authority. No, it's like they're quite confident in what they say, but it's not because of a legitimate understanding of God's word.

It is from their own assertion of opinion. And then they find Bible verses to cherry pick to back it up. When they make statements like this, what they're doing is buttering you up to make what they're about to say more acceptable to you. And then. The result is always less godly and more worldly.

Here's an example. This a year ago, Rick Warren, very famous pastor of Saddleback Church, purpose driven life. Did this a year ago when the Lord revealed to him a new insight. He said, all my years of ministry, I'd never studied. I'd really never studied the issue of women pastors before.

And so, I, I searched the scriptures. And I looked and I read, and I prayed to the Lord, Lord show me what insight do I need here? And really it's if he's being honest, it's like, Lord, show me a way to get to the conclusion that I want that works well in Southern California where I'm a pastor, help me get to the conclusion that I want to arrive at and, but make it sound so spirit was dressed up in all the language that conservative Bible believing Christians would, that would signal to us faithfulness.

And then all of a sudden, wouldn't you know it, he found an authorization for women pastors in the Bible, despite so many scriptures that explicitly teach the opposite. They're not hard to find. They're not obscure, but that's what he did. He it's so arrogant because it places human reason above scripture.

And that is the definition of pride. Spiritual pride is to place your own human reason above scripture. Humility is. Using the best of your human reason that you can, as it is surrendered to God's Word. Because God's Word sets the standard and the parameters of what is real and what is true. But the result of when you do this is they become less rational.

They lose the ability to reason well, and that leads to my third point. The third one here is they are irrational. They are irrational. False teachers are irrational because their minds have been captured by sin. Sin corrupts. There's no part of our being that isn't corrupted by sin. Body, soul, and mind.

Our minds are corrupt. Our minds are fallen. Unrestrained sin drives people crazy. Literally. It literally makes people crazy. And if you ever want to do a, just look this up. It's not hard to find. Lots of recent studies. Just like mental illness is through the roof. And wouldn't you know it.

It, it tracks right along with the abandonment of God's word and the increase of sin and even celebration of sin in our society. People are going nuts because we're abandoning the standard. We're abandoning the very source of rational thought.

False teachers, verse 12, these irrational animals. They become more beast like, more like an animal, more it's crazy. I saw this thing the other day and I posted it on Twitter, it was just too funny. It was it was this, somebody was saying like, as it turned, I can't remember exactly how it was worded, but something like, cannibalism actually could be a good thing.

Something like that. Maybe we've been too hard on cannibals. And it's just you are insane. How could you possibly post, like I published this article on a scientific website, but that's where it was. It was on the scientific website, but it makes people crazy. Irrational animals, creatures of instinct, they're just going with an urge, an impulse, but not stopping to think rationally.

Sin enslaves us to our more animalistic sort of instincts, and we become subject to our flesh and our passions. Verse 13 says, they suffer wrong as the wage for their wrongdoing. This is important. Sin begets sin. And often, sin is the judgment for sin. That's how God judges sin, is He gives people over.

Romans chapter 1 says that God gave them over to a debased mind. Sin begets sin. And the more you give yourself over to sin, the more God will judge you by giving you over to even more sin. And sin, at least in this earthly life and our experience, is sin. is a judgment of God. Verse 19, now this is he says this a little bit later on in the text, but I pulled it in here.

They promise them freedom, but they themselves are slaves of corruption, for whatever overcomes a person to that he is enslaved. Meditate on that for a few days. Whatever overcomes a person to that he is enslaved. And so, you have different species of sin that will cluster together. And it accumulates weight like anchors that drags the soul deeper and deeper into sin.

Romans 1:23 says, claiming to be wise, it became fools whenever you turn away from truth, what's left? Madness. Let's all this left. They are irrational. Next one is they are shameless. They are shameless. Verse 12, or rather verse 13, right here. They counted pleasure to revel.

That's shamelessness. Now, you may not know this, but the Bible has a category of sin in the Old Testament, at least in Exodus, a category of sin that becomes worse when committed in the daytime. Did you know that? Because sin committed in the daytime means there's a certain degree of shamelessness about it.

You're not even hiding. You're not even trying to conceal this thing. You're doing it in broad daylight. I was telling somebody last night about, my, my truck was smashed up by some kids about a year ago or eight months ago or something, and they did it in broad daylight, like for 20 minutes, like standing on my hood and throwing rocks, trying to break my windshield did 9,000 of damage for my truck in broad daylight.

There was security cameras. I got the whole thing. I can zoom in on their faces. That's shameless behavior, and that's what happens when people's sin is just taken over. They're, and I felt bad because these kids are 12, 13 years old, they're little children. But that's they're just, there's no restraint.

So, it's sinning with a high hand. It's sinning with utter contempt for any notion of right and wrong. So, Exodus 22, here's an example if you're wondering. Exodus 22, verse 2, says, as if a thief is caught in the act of breaking in, and he is beaten to death. No one is guilty of bloodshed. But, if this happens after sunrise, the household, the householder is guilty of bloodshed.

Meaning that because the same act occurred in the daytime, there is a different complicity in it. And that's important. So, evil done in the daytime, it's more brazen than evil done in the dark. And it's a loss of shame. Now shame is a God given intuition. It's a good thing. And this is something I hear a lot about in Christian circles, about how it's we don't want to feel shame.

We don't want to feel shame. Jesus took your shame away. And I'm like no, Jesus doesn't overturn a God given intuition to feel shame when you do something shameful. The shame is a way that God, by the Spirit, can now take teach you what you're doing is sinful so that you can repent and turn away from that thing.

The shameful feeling is a good thing. And a loss of shame means that your conscience is so corrupted, your conscience is so defiled that you no longer, you've rejected this intuition that God has given you. But shame as a God given intuition is built in our conscience. It's hardwired written in and that, that's a mercy that God gives to us.

Even people that don't know the Lord still have this intuition, this conscience thing, and it prevents greater sins. Now, when somebody loses all sense of shame. That's when you know that they are in a very bad place spiritually. Verse 13 also says their blots and blemishes reveling in their deceptions while they feast with you.

This is debated, but it seems as though this is a reference to the Lord's Table. So, they think that they're so shameless that they have no problem marching up to the Lord's Table. And taking communion as though they've done nothing wrong and there's no problem with what they've done. Three sins, or three things that we've seen so far.

They despise authority. They're arrogant. They're irrational. They're shameless. Did I do that right? I want to make sure. Did I miss? I've given you four points. That's right. Four points. Despise authority. Arrogant. Irrational. Shameless. Okay. I was like, wait a minute. Do I, have I covered everything?

But I have. Okay. Here's number five. Number five is they promote sexual immorality. Now the next two I, we talked more at length about last week, but I'll just cover a few things here. They, number five, they promote sexual immorality. Okay. Verse 14 says they have eyes full of adultery. And they're insatiable for sin.

So human sexuality is connected to the image of God. You see this in Genesis chapter one. And so, there is some aspects of our sexuality that represents transcendent realities. So, Christ being a bridegroom and the church being the bride and that is mirrored in the marriage relationship. Ephesians five tells us there is something transcendent that is communicated through human sexuality.

And that's part of the desire of sexuality, the desire of sex. And as such, sexual holiness is essential for our obedience because it has so much power and there's so much potential deception and as such, sexual sin is a persistent temptation that we're always having to resist. Now, whenever false teachers come along, like one of the things that, that is very, one of the most common sins that they want to excuse is sexual sin.

They want to come along and offer a shortcut and they'll say what the Bible says about sexuality, about manhood, womanhood, what the Bible says about those things actually doesn't mean what you think and what you think already is more likely to be true. It's enticing because it, it cuts a path to give us what we want on our terms and apart from God's authority.

We saw in verse two a couple of weeks ago or last week it was verse two. It says many will follow their sensuality. So, it's like this works, right? It plays. People. People like to be deceived in that way because it gives them the sin that they want. So, what happens as a result is they entice unsteady souls.

So, if you're like, if you're standing on one foot, you don't have your, have the right balance, right? So, if somebody come along right now and gave me a little push, I would go over because I'm unsteady. I'm not as well grounded. And a lot of souls are not very discerning. And so, it's like they're standing on one foot spiritually and they're naive.

They're impressionable. Okay. And so, all it takes for, is for a false teacher to come along and just give them a little nudge and they entice them. They capture them with their false teaching.

Number six, they are greedy. They're greedy. We mentioned this last week always, or also, that there's always market demand for lies. It will always be popular. False teachers have their hearts trained in greed.

Now, any of these sins are possible just in the flesh through normal temptation, but false teachers find a way to profit from it. They find a way to make a living off of promoting sin. And so, they put their false teaching up for sale. People will always pay someone else to soothe their consciences about sin and tell them it's okay.

They'll put up money for that. That's what there's this reference here. You may not be familiar with the way of Balaam, the son of Beor. That's in, is the book of numbers? I think it's a book of numbers where that story is. I just read it in my Bible reading plan a week or two ago, but they follow the way of Balaam, the son of Beor, who loved gain from wrongdoing.

Now, if you read the story at first, he resisted the temptation to, it’s there was Balak came to him and is Hey, I'll pay you money if you'll prophesy against Israel, and the guy said, Nope, I can't do that. I'm not going to. I'm only going to say what I hear from God, and it's weird because this guy is not a believer, but evidently he was still able to prophesy, but it seemed like Balak wore him down over time with more and more offers and on the fourth time it's like he was headed that way and The irony of the story is that he's riding this donkey and they come through a pass and the angel the Lord is Standing there ready to strike him down and he didn't see It's if it's a comical story because it's like he's so stupid and blind because he doesn't see the angel of the Lord's right there.

That's about to kill him. But the donkey sees it and the donkey is like, hey, moron, don't you see what's happening here? He's trying to get out of the way. And Balaam, he's like beating his donkey. It's a hilarious story. And I think it actually happened. Yes, the donkey spoke because I believe every word of the Bible, but the point of that story is not like, hey, here's some cool trick God did.

We made a donkey speak. No, the point of the story is like when you lose your mind in this way, you can be enticed to put yourself in the gravest spiritual danger and not realize it. And that's exactly what Balaam son of Beor was doing. All right, so those are six characteristics of false teachers.

Now, as you've probably noticed, these can be instructive for all of us because it's the whole list is not just, yeah, what those sinners out there do. No, it's like in all of these things, it's yeah, that can apply to me. Yeah. I can be greedy. I can be enticed by sexual sin. Yeah. I can give myself over to sin and lose my mind.

All of these things can be, can happen. And that's true. So, the first step in growing in your discernment, and this is where we'll finish. To grow in your discernment, the first step is to repent of any and all known sin in your life. If you're not repenting of your sin, then you will be a fool. You will be deceived, you will be naive, you'll be unsteady, you'll be easily enticed because you're allowing your conscience to be defiled by unrepentance.

And that'll drive you crazy, but you won't know it. The thing about crazy people is they don't know they're crazy, and they'll drive you crazy, because sin will make you crazy. It's like the song, that, Rejoice, rejoice, oh sinners come, you know that one, but there's that line, you may know what I'm talking about, it’s oh sin, it made me crazy.

It's every time I hear that line, I'm like, yes, that is so true. That is so true, and I, my, by God's grace, we repent of sin, and we become more sane through doing that. You repent of any sin in your life, and you believe the gospel, and that means Jesus Christ purchased your redemption. He took the judgment of that sin in your behalf, and he offers forgiveness for any and all sin, and the power to overcome that sin in the power of the Spirit.

False teachers are enslaved by their sin, right? They're crazy. There's this prophet's madness thing here. False teachers are crazy. They don't know that they're crazy. They don't know that what they're teaching you is utter madness. And that's why we have to discern it because they don't look crazy and they don't even sound crazy a lot of times, but it's craziness.

It's insanity that is being presented for us in your Instagram feed or tick tock or whatever it is that you're into. It's like we run across false teaching all the time. And so, we have to discern it. And the first step of discernment is repenting of sin, having a posture before the Lord of any sin.

Lord, show me sin and I want to repent of it. Give it to the Lord. You confess it. You believe the gospel, the truth of the gospel, that Christ has cleansed you and that because of your faith, you are counted righteous as we started this morning with. And then you can pray prayerfully, try to discern what false teachers are prisoners and they don't know it. They think that they know the way to freedom, even though they're captives. They're claiming to be wise, even though they're fools. We don't listen to them. We try to discern it. And I haven't written my sermon for next week yet, but hopefully I want to get to some practical ways that, that we can, what we can do in our lives when we encounter things that seem off to us.

How do we discern that biblically either this week or, the next couple of three weeks or so we'll be able to get into that hopefully, but that's where we'll leave it today. We can be confident. This is true. And that, that God will forgive us whenever we repent of our sin. Amen. Let's pray.

Thank you, Father, that you have spoken these things to us, Lord, and I pray for us to be able to discern even this sermon. Anything that is not true or of you, I pray that you will give us wisdom to discern that and correct it in us. And whatever is true, Lord, help us to apply it in our lives so that we can become more godly.

And I pray that, Lord, you'll free us from any sin or temptation that we're captive to. Amen. And that you will lead us on the path where we become more discerning, more wise, more mature in our faith. So, help us, Lord. I thank you, God, that just, I'm so grateful, Lord, that we can do this, knowing that we are saved and recounted righteous, not by our own effort, but because of Jesus and our faith in Him.

So, as we come to the table now, we celebrate the gospel and the grace that we have received in you. We pray this in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.