Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - You're Not Immune to False Teachers | New Testament | 2 Peter 2

Episode Date: February 24, 2023

Want to know the secret to resisting false teachers in your life? The solution might not be what you think. In today's episode, Patrick talks through 2 Peter 2 to discuss how to avoid following false teachers. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Join the TMBT community in reading the entire New Testament in one year. Get your FREE reading plan here. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it with others, so others can find it too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter@TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: 2 Peter 2

Welcome to 10-minute Bible talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Patrick Miller. You know, back in the day, people used to talk a lot more about false teachers. These are people who teach false ideas about God, about Jesus, about the Christian life. But these days, I don't hear people talk about false teachers much at all. And maybe that's because we don't have as much of a problem with false teachers. But something tells me that's wrong. In 2 Peter chapter 2, Peter describes the cost of following false teachers. And to do this, he draws on an ancient story from the Torah, the first five books of the Bible,

specifically the book of numbers. And so if you've been doing 10-minute Bible texts with us for a long time, we went through the whole book of numbers. And so you'll remember what happened inside of that book, or at least a little bit of it. You see, the Israelites, they'd been rescued from slavery in Egypt, and now they were preparing to go into the promised land. But at every step, the people rebel. at every step they trust false teachers rather than trusting in Moses.

There's one rebellion after the next. For example, they send spies into the land of Canaan where they're supposed to go and conquer. And when the spies come back, they bring a bad report. They say, these people are terrifying. They're stronger than us. There's no way that we'll be able to defeat them. This is a death wish. And the people believe these false prophets.

It's not just them. There were people like Cora who came along and led a rebellion against Moses. Moses' own brother and sister, Miriam and Aaron. and they both lead rebellions, and they all try to say something similar. We don't need Moses. We don't need the law that Moses has laid down. We can do this on our own. It was a form of false teaching.

And as the story of numbers goes on, the first generation that came out of slavery, they actually die away. God said as a result of following all these false teachers, you're going to die here in the wilderness. But your children will enter into the land. And as they're trying to enter into the land, another false prophet comes along. But this one is from outside of Israel. His name was Baylam.

And Balam was a guy who was hired by a foreign king to come along and bless that foreign king's army so that the foreign king could defeat Israel so that he could stop God's plan. But as the story goes along, Balam, he tries his best. He keeps accidentally cursing the foreign king's army and blessing Israel. Now, God wants Balim to turn around. God doesn't want Balim to keep going out there in the service of these foreign kings and trying to contravene God's will, but Balim keeps going. And eventually, Balaam is the one who tells this foreign king how to beat the Israelites.

He says, hey, why don't you send some of your women into the camp to go seduce some of the men and lead them into idol worship? That'll get God riled up. And he was right. There were people who were led astray by his false prophecy. I just want to ask you a question. Do you think that you're at risk? Do you think there's ever been a time where you've bought into a false teaching or a false prophet? Or do you think that you're immune to that?

that you can never possibly be tempted. I think Peter wants us to see ourselves as the Israelites walking through the wilderness. And of course they were tempted. Of course they were at risk. You can be tempted. You can be at risk, which is why you have to take seriously the threat of false teaching in your life because false teaching draws you away from the living God. False teaching leads you into idolatry.

False teaching leads to death and destruction. False teaching is a big, big, big. deal and you're at risk i'm at risk there is many false teachers today who claim the name of jesus as there have been throughout history so i just want to read from this chapter because peter's warnings here are dire and you might feel judged i might feel judged in the midst of it but might be a judgment that we need because we need to be warned he says this in verse one but there were also false prophets among the people he's talking about those israelites living in the wilderness just as there will be false teachers among you. They will secretly introduce destructive heresies. Heresies are just

false ideas about God, false ideas about Jesus in the Christian life, even denying the sovereign Lord who bought them and they bring swift destruction on themselves. Many will follow their depraved conduct and will bring the way of truth into disrepute. So he's saying many are going to bind to the false teaching. And while that's awful for them personally, it also brings disrepute onto the name of Jesus. He continues, in their greed, these false teachers will exploit you with fabricated stories. Their condemnation has been hanging over them and their destruction has not been sleeping. Here's this point. False teachers always have ulterior motives. Maybe it's financial motives. I can get a big following. I can get a big book deal. I can become a big name with lots of attention if I just say what

people want to hear. I think today about the amount of false teachers who are telling people false things about sexuality and sex in general. They say, look, maybe you've heard it said that sex should be in marriage only exclusively between a man and a woman, but I say to you something different. That's not what God really thought. That's not what God really meant. And they can get a huge following doing this, and they can lead many astray into destruction. As Peter goes on, he talks about how false teachers work. He says that they appeal to our lusts. Now, lust isn't just a sexual word. I mean, I just gave that example, but lust is just any inordinate desire, any misdirected desire. So maybe a false teacher or something like the

prosperity gospel, it says, hey, if you follow God, you'll get rich, you'll get famous. That's a false teaching. And again, often those false teachers profit as a result of what they're saying. But this is what you need to take away. If you want to be aware of false teaching in your life and resist it, you need to know what your lusts are. You need to know where you're tempted. to resist God. Maybe you find the sexual ethic of the New Testament offensive. Or maybe you find it just something you don't want to live, you don't want to be a part of, you don't like it for yourself.

Well, that's an area where you can be tempted by false teaching because your lust are at work. Or maybe you're tempted by materialism, consumerism. You always want new stuff. You always want the bigger house. You always want the nicer car. You always want the better vacation. Well, again, you're going to be tempted by false teachers who appeal to your lust, who tell you that, yeah, following Jesus means you can have all these things.

It doesn't change how you spend. It doesn't change how you view your money and your resources. Or maybe your lust are around reputation. You don't ever want to be in a fight with anyone. You want everybody to like you, to look up to you, to think highly of you. And so the false teachers you're going to be drawn to are the ones who tell you, hey, it's okay to be quiet about your Christianity. It's okay never to evangelize.

it's okay to never share Jesus. That's not a big deal. Well, they're appealing to your lust, to your desire. See, we're all, me and you, we are all at risk for false teachers. Now, the teacher that appeals to us is going to be different depending on our lust. And that's precisely why you need to be aware of what those lusts are. When you start encountering a teacher who's appealing to an area that you find difficult, that's a teacher you have to be extraordinarily careful around.

The bigger picture for Peter is this. He wants his readers. He wants all of us to give our deepest faith and allegiance and love to Jesus. But we can't do that if we're following false teachers. If we follow a false teacher, we put up a wall between ourselves and the living God and the life he actually promises. Nothing is worth that. Avoid false teachers. Take them seriously.

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