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Peter warns believers that false teachers among you will secretly introduce destructive heresies into the church. Jim Osman introduces 2 Peter 2:1-3, explaining how this chapter connects with Peter's teaching on Scripture's sufficiency in chapter 1 and the apostolic witness in chapter 3. Throughout Israel's history, false prophets arose among God's people, leading them astray from the truth. Similarly, false teachers among you will deny the Master who bought them, bringing swift destruction upon themselves. Many will follow their sensuality, thereby maligning the way of truth. In their greed, these deceivers will exploit believers with false words. Peter uses Scripture's harshest language to describe false teachers among you because their deceptive doctrines, depraved desires, and deserved doom pose the greatest threat to Christ's church. Believers must remain vigilant, identifying false teachers among you by examining their teaching, character, and the judgment Scripture promises them.
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Creators and Guests
What is Kootenai Church Morning Worship?
The expository preaching ministry of Kootenai Community Church by Pastors/Elders Jim Osman, Jess Whetsel, Dave Rich, and Cornel Rasor. This podcast feed contains the weekly sermons preached from the pulpit on Sunday mornings at Kootenai Church.
The Elders/Teachers of Kootenai Church exposit verse-by-verse through whole books of the Bible. These sermons can be found within their own podcast series by visiting the KCC Audio Archive.
2 Peter 2, beginning at verse 1: “But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will also be false teachers among you, who will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing swift destruction upon themselves.” With those words in 2 Peter, we turn something of a corner. We come now to the purpose for which Peter wrote this book, to expose false teachers and to warn about their destructive heresies and their false teaching. And the next two chapters are addressing this issue. Chapter 2 is an extensive description of the character, the nature, and the effect of false teaching, the false teachers themselves, and what they taught.
And as you are going to see, the harshest and most severe language that is used in all of the New Testament is directed at false teachers. Those who distort the truth, those who combine truth with error or misrepresent God or what He has said, those who pervert the gospel, distort the gospel, ignore the gospel, cloud over the gospel with other things, and those who teach error regarding Christ, they receive the most blistering condemnation in all of the New Testament. In fact, their judgment is described in the most chilling terms. Their teachings are condemned and the language is blistering, severe, and aggressive. Jesus and the apostles did not try to get along and go along. Jesus and the apostles didn't seek to find middle ground with false teachers and a way in which they could all agree to get together and work together and link arms for some common political, social, or cultural goal. They didn't try to treat them as well-intentioned brethren with just a few quirky ideas on some of these things that we call essentials. And neither did they moderate their language or their tone when talking about false teachers. Not at all.
Evangelicalism today is full of tone police, people who are willing to say to you, “Look, I might agree with everything you're saying, and it might genuinely be biblical, I just don't like your tone. I don't like the way you say it. You're too black and white. You're not nuanced enough. You're not trying to be harmonious. You're being disunifying. You're being divisive inside of the church. You need more nuance, more love, more of a conciliatory tone, more understanding towards false teachers. What you say is biblical, I just don't like how you say it.”
Now, I'm going to share something with you that is probably going to come as a surprise to most, if not all, of you. I myself have been criticized and reprimanded for my tone sometimes in dealing with false teachers. Now I'm going to give you a second to sort of collect yourself after that revelation. Just breathe with me. Gather together. The shock has passed. Some years ago when I called in to Michael Brown's radio program and criticized him for platforming and defending men like Benny Hinn and Sid Roth, who is a bottom-feeder of the Charismatic movement and platforms other bottom-feeders of the Charismatic movement—he promotes and advances any heretic, any lunatic, any charlatan, any fraud, any fake, any liar who is willing to come onto his program and shill their products. Sid Roth is willing to give them not just a platform, but a hearty endorsement. And Michael Brown said to me, and I think it was in the roundtable when we discussed this for three and a half hours, but if it's not there, he said to me privately that there were times when Sid Roth would call him up and say, “Hey, what about this guest? What do you think? Thumbs up or thumbs down?” And Michael said he had given some thumbs down to many of them. And I thought, “Well, that means that he gave some thumbs up to some of the other guests of Sid Roth as well.” And when I criticized him for being willing to defend the worst of the worst inside of evangelicalism, he suggested that I was being uncharitable and judgmental and hateful for calling them out and, in his words, condemning them to Hell just on the basis of what they taught.”
But I would suggest to you that Michael Brown would probably have a few choice words for Jesus and the apostles as well. I don't think he would have liked Jesus's tone in Matthew 23. I don't think he would have liked Peter's tone in 2 Peter 2. I don't think he would have liked Paul's tone in 1 Timothy 4 or 2 Timothy 3. I don't think he would have liked Jude's tone for the whole book he wrote. I think Michael Brown would have given them the same tone-correcting advice: what you're saying may be true, but we just don't like how you say it.
Jesus and the apostles were not men who used inflammatory language just simply for the sake of being inflammatory. They didn't use this kind of language just for the sake of being divisive or to make a point. They weren't teaching in extremes. The harshest, the most scathing, the most vitriolic, the most aggressive language in all of the New Testament is aimed at false teachers.
False teachers and false teaching is mentioned in every single book of the New Testament except one, Philemon. Every other book warns about false teaching and false teachers so that the flock, the sheep, the true believers may know what to look out for, to be able to identify these men, to mark them, to avoid them, to stay away from them, to mark their teachings as heretical and erroneous. And if anything, in our modern evangelicalism in the church today, we are not so aggressive against false teachers that we all collectively need to moderate our tone a little bit. We are on the opposite spectrum of that. Almost anything is welcomed into evangelicalism that even sniffs of Christianity, even has a hint of it. It's brought in sometimes under the guise of the pulpits, the shepherds, the guardians of the flock, and it's embraced and promoted in churches all over the country. We are anything but hostile to false teachers. We have a long way to go on this spectrum to being way too extreme toward false teachers. We have a long way to go before we're even close to that.
We in evangelicalism, in our country, have fallen on the other extreme. We are way too embracing. Evangelicalism today embraces rabid, rapacious wolves inside the flock. So the teaching on 2 Peter 2 is timely and it's welcome and it's something that we do well to pay attention to and to give heed to.
Today I'm just going to give you an introduction to 2 Peter 2. I'm going to give you an outline for verses 1–3. I want to show you how what Peter says about false teachers sort of fits into the context and the flow of the argument of the book so you can see what Peter is trying to do there. Then I'm going to give you an outline for these first three verses, and then we'll sort of dip our toes into verses 1–3 just a little bit, and then next week, Lord willing, when we come back, we'll dive into the content of verses 1–3.
So a connection to the context of 2 Peter 2—it may feel, as I said at the very beginning, that we have radically turned a corner in this book. It may feel that way because Peter hasn't mentioned false teachers for all of chapter 1. You get all the way to the end of chapter 1 and you kind of think, “OK, it's really good. He's talking about salvation and Scripture. These are all good things for apostles to be talking about and reminding us of.” But then you get to chapter 2 and you realize beginning in verse 1, “Look, the rest of this book is about these false teachers and their false teaching and the judgment that they face.”
And it might feel like we've turned a corner, but keep in mind that Peter has been preparing us for the content of chapter 2 for all of chapter 1. He has been talking to us about the sufficiency of Scripture, the sufficiency of our salvation. He has implored for us to be diligent, to grow in our faith, to add virtue to our faith, and to rest upon apostolic testimony and prophetic Scripture. In verses 3–4 of chapter 1, he talked about the sufficiency of saving grace. In verses 5–9, he talked about the sufficiency of sanctifying grace. In verses 10–11, he highlights the sufficiency of securing grace, and then in verses 12–21, the sufficiency of Scripture. Peter wants us to rest. In the presence of false teaching in the church, he wants us to rest upon what God has provided in our salvation for past, present, and future, as well as Scripture.
He ends chapter 1 by hearkening back to the apostolic eyewitness testimony (vv. 16–18), then to the prophetic word (vv. 19–20). Peter is pointing us to Scripture in chapter 1, wanting to make sure that we are rooted, that we are grounded in Scripture, that we are diligent to lead a godly life and to rest upon the sufficiency of what God has given to us in His Word. And if we do that—look at chapter 1, verse 10. If you’re “diligent to make your calling and choosing sure . . . in doing these things, you will never stumble; for in this way the entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ will be abundantly supplied to you” (vv. 10–11). So he wants us rooted and established in our faith, grounded in the Word of God, rooted in Scripture, trusting the apostolic testimony (vv. 16–18), trusting the prophetic testimony (vv. 19–21), so that we can then evaluate these false teachers and their false teaching starting in chapter 2, verse 1.
The mention of the prophetic Scriptures at the end of chapter 1, by the way, was Peter's way of transitioning to the false prophets. He talks about true prophets at the end of chapter 1, but then he transitions into the false prophets at the beginning of chapter 2. Ignore the chapter break because you remember those aren't there in the original writing. Look back at chapter 1, verse 19: “And we have as more sure the prophetic word, to which you do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star arises in your hearts.” Then he talks about the nature of prophetic Scripture. “Know this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes by one's own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever made by the will of man, but men being moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God” (vv. 20–21). So he talks about true prophets, true prophecy, these men moved by the Holy Spirit who spoke from God. Then there is an immediate contrast with chapter 2, verse 1: “But false prophets also arose among the people.”
So you have the true mentioned at the end of chapter 1, you have the false explained and illustrated and described in chapter 2, and then I want you to notice how the same theme continues into chapter 3. Look at chapter 3, verses 1–2: “This is now, beloved, the second letter I am writing to you in which I am stirring up your sincere mind by way of reminder, that you should remember the words spoken beforehand by the holy prophets and the commandment of the Lord and Savior spoken by your apostles.” Do you see how this teaching on false teachers in chapter 2 is bracketed by him pointing to the apostles and the prophets at the end of chapter 1 and the apostles and the prophets at the beginning of chapter 3? Peter says, “Here is the truth. These men are liars. Remember, here is the truth. You have been given the truth. It has been handed to you. You have it sufficiently. There is no need to believe all of this nonsense by the false teachers, the false apostles, the false prophets, with all of their false teaching. You have the truth given to you through the teaching of the apostles and through the teaching of the prophets.” So Peter brackets this warning about false doctrine and false teachers with a reference to true teachers and the true apostles.
Let me give you an outline of chapter 2, and then we are going to read together chapter 2, and I want you to see how this outline for chapter 2 kind of flows. In verses 1–3, Peter introduces the danger of false teachers. He tells us a few things that he is going to return to again and again through all of chapter 2. So in the first three verses, he sort of lays out his case. For the rest of this chapter, he is going to basically pull those strings all the way through as he kind of develops everything he says in those first three verses. So in verses 1–3, he introduces the danger of false teachers. In verses 4–10, he describes their judgment. Then in verses 10–16, he describes their character, their teaching, and their conduct, which comes out of their character. Then in verses 17–22, the end of the chapter, he describes the effect of their teaching on the followers. So an introduction, their judgment, their character, and the effects of their teaching. That's chapter 2.
So let's read together, and I want you to notice the language that is used in 2 Peter 2. Beginning in verse 1, the introduction to the danger of false teachers, verses 1–3:
1 But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will also be false teachers among you, who will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing swift destruction upon themselves.
2 And many will follow their sensuality, and because of them the way of the truth will be maligned.
3 And in their greed they will exploit you with false words, their judgment from long ago is not idle, and their destruction is not asleep. (LSB)
That's the introduction. Now look at their judgment. Verses 4–10:
4 For if God did not spare angels who sinned, but cast them into the pit and delivered them to chains of darkness, being kept for judgment;
5 and did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a preacher of righteousness, with seven others, when He brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly;
6 and if He condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to destruction by reducing them to ashes, having made them an example to those who would live ungodly lives thereafter;
7 and if He rescued righteous Lot, oppressed by the sensual conduct of unprincipled men
8 (for by what he saw and heard that righteous man, while living among them, felt his righteous soul tormented day after day by their lawless deeds),
9 then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trial, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment for the day of judgment,
10 and especially those who go after the flesh in its corrupt lust and despise authority. (LSB)
That describes their judgment. Then in verses 10–16, he describes their character and their teaching.
10 Daring, self-willed, they do not tremble when they blaspheme glorious ones,
11 whereas angels who are greater in strength and power do not bring a reviling judgment against them before the Lord.
12 But these, like unreasoning animals, born as creatures of instinct to be captured and killed, blaspheming where they have no knowledge, will in the destruction of those creatures also be destroyed,
13 suffering unrighteousness as the wages of their unrighteousness, considering it a pleasure to revel in the daytime—they are stains and blemishes, reveling in their deceptions, as they feast with you,
14 having eyes full of adultery and unceasing sin, enticing unstable souls, having a heart trained in greed—they are accursed children.
15 Forsaking the right way, they have gone astray, having followed the way of Balaam, the son of Beor, who loved the wages of unrighteousness,
16 but he received a rebuke for his own lawlessness, for a mute donkey, speaking out with a voice of a man, restrained the madness of the prophet. (LSB)
Verses 17–22 describe the effect of false teachers upon their followers. Look at verse 17:
17 These are springs without water and mists driven by a storm, for whom the black darkness has been kept.
18 For speaking out arrogant words of vanity, they entice by sensual lusts of the flesh, those who barely escape from the ones who conducted themselves in error,
19 promising them freedom while they themselves are slaves of corruption; for by what a man is overcome, by this he is enslaved.
20 For if they are overcome, having both escaped the defilements of the world by the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and having again been entangled in them, then the last state has become worse for them than the first.
21 For it would be better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than having known it, to turn away from the holy commandment handed on to them.
22 The message of the true proverb has happened to them, “A dog returns to its own vomit,” and, “A sow, after washing, returns to wallowing in the mire.” (LSB)
Boy, that is brutal. I didn't say anything close to that about Sid Roth. I believe that everything that is said here is true of those false teachers, ones in the past and modern-day ones. And I'm not in any way advocating that we be hateful or vindictive or vengeful toward false teachers, not at all, not advocating for that. But I will tell you this: no matter how harshly we might speak of false teachers and the judgment that they will face, the empty vessels that they are, and the damnation that their teaching brings, no matter how harshly we might describe those things, we can never even approach what you just read in 2 Peter 2, never even approach that. Peter is not advocating that we be hateful or vindictive. He's not advocating that we be proud or boastful or arrogant toward false teachers. But he is advocating that we know exactly what the difference between true and false is and that we have both the courage and the conviction to stand up and to speak the truth and to say what is true and be unashamed of it. That is what Peter is advocating for.
Now, who are the false teachers who are mentioned here? You'll notice that no names were given. It’s not like in 2 Timothy and 1 Timothy where Paul names Hymenaeus and Alexander and Philetus, these men who had made shipwreck of the faith and whose teaching he says was spreading like gangrene. Peter doesn't mention any names here specifically. And from the details, it is difficult to figure out exactly what kind of sect or religious group these people fit into. We're told about their nature. We're told about whether or not they're regenerate. We have described for us very generally their teaching. We're told about their influence and how they influence others, what their appeal is. We're told about their motive: “In their greed they will exploit you” (2 Pet. 2:3). They are pursuing sensual lusts and sensual desires. So we get kind of a description very generally of who these false teachers are but nobody and nothing specific. We can discern their lifestyle, we can discern that they were sensual, immoral, impure, and greedy people, and we know all about their judgment, but there’s no clear indication as to exactly which heresy Peter has in mind when he writes this.
This is unlike the book of Galatians, for instance. The book of Galatians is written to a sect, the Judaizers. We know what they taught. We know why they taught it. We know where they came from. We know what their ethnicity was. We know everything about them. But in 2 Peter we have no such specific indication as to the nature of their teaching and exactly what their heresy was. Some have suggested that these false teachers in 2 Peter were proto-Gnostics. In other words, they were kind of the precursors to the Gnostic heresy, which would come to full bloom about a hundred years after the first century. Gnosticism and the views of the Gnostics were kind of in seed form in the first century. You didn't really have full-blown Gnosticism. You had sort of a worldview that was developing, and it kind of affected everything, but it's later, after the first century, that Gnosticism sort of comes to full fruition and blooms. Some have suggested that Peter had in mind the Gnostics.
Others have suggested that he had in mind the Stoics or the Epicureans, who were mentioned in Acts 17. They had a worldview that was insinuating itself into Christianity. Some have suggested that these were maybe Libertines, possibly Judaizers. I don't think it's Judaizers, determined by how Peter describes them as sort of pursuing sensual desires and being greedy and sexually immoral. That doesn't sound like the legalists of the Judaizers. So it might have been some combination of all of these errors. But here's what we're going to do. As we work our way through chapter 2, we're going to look at some of the indications and clues given to us by Peter and we're going to try to figure out who it is that he's talking about.
Here's the benefit of Peter not naming anybody or anything specifically. If Peter had said, “Look, here are the guys. Here's the man. Here are their names, and here's the name of their sect, their theological group,” if he had said that, then we would be tempted to think, “OK, if we're not part of that group, then we're safe.” Right? But by just speaking generally and painting with a broad brush, as it were, you can realize that there's all kinds of people that would fit into this. The devil has a hundred different ways to disguise false teaching and to appeal to us. Our enemy is one who masquerades as an angel of light. He is a theological shape-shifter.
Sometimes the wolves vary just slightly from the truth, just slightly. There's just enough deviation from what is actually true that unless you are really discerning and you are really paying attention, they can get away with promoting their errors. And other times, their deviation is a hundred and eighty degrees from the truth. Sometimes the wolves are Libertines who openly promote sexual immorality amongst the people of God, and sometimes the wolves are legalists, whose rigid standards of morality also deny the gospel. Those are two extremes.
Sometimes the error is a worldview or a way of thinking about the truth, not an outright denial that truth exists. And other times, the error or the wolf is just an outright denial of the truth. Sometimes the wolf is gregarious and popular and bombastic and a captivating speaker who grabs your attention from the very first word and holds it all the way to the end and has you standing on your feet and clapping at the end. And sometimes the wolf is dressed in clerical robes with a collar and he speaks in dulcet, nuanced tones that would put a glass eye to sleep. They can be both extremes.
Sometimes the wolves are well-known and popular with big platforms and ministries and they write lots of books, have lots of followers, and get lots of clicks. And sometimes the wolves are the chair of a theology department in some obscure seminary or university whose names are not known to anybody. Sometimes wolves are outgoing and bold and brash and always shaking things up and changing things. And other times, they are genteel and polite and they never make any waves. The devil is a theological shape-shifter.
So Peter doesn't give us some niche, narrow, little description of it, but rather he paints with a broad brush, not so that we would take a bunch of good guys and lump them in as false teachers, but he paints with a broad brush so that we can understand there are thousands of theological shades to this portrait of a false teacher. And we ought not to think that they're only this or they're only that. You can have men and women who are denying the miracles of Scripture but are in orthodox denominations and are cessationists and would tell you that they believe that all of the books of the Bible are inspired and infallible and inerrant, and they say all of that, but they deny the essentials of the faith. And you can have men who are outgoing and gregarious and charismatic who are also in the same camp. So understand that the variety here is all the way across the board. Our job is to be discerning and to be judicious in how it is that we approach these theological issues so that we are not swept away.
False teachers are ever present. Look again at verse 1. This is where we're going to sort of dabble our toes into these verses before I give you an outline for verses 1–3. “False prophets also arose among the people, just as there will also be false teachers among you.” Do you notice how in verse 1 he goes from false prophets to false teachers? He doesn't say there were false prophets among them and there'll be false prophets among you. He says there were false prophets among them, Old Testament prophets whom he just mentioned at the end of chapter 1. Right, there was the true and there will also be the false. He mentions that. But then he switches from false prophets among them to “there will be false teachers among you.” That may be a clue as to who Peter is talking about in this regard: he may be addressing false teachers who were not making any claim to be prophets or apostles or recipients of divine revelation. In other words, just because somebody doesn't stand up and say, “Hey, I got a revelation from God. Here's what the Lord told me,” but they get up with a bible and they don't claim to be prophets, they can still teach error, even if what they're teaching is Scripture. So a false teacher is more general. A false prophet is a false teacher, but false teacher is a more general term than that. It's not just somebody who claims to receive divine revelation.
There will be false teachers among you. This was something Moses warned the people of Israel about in Deuteronomy 13:1–5. And I'll just give you that reference. I'm not going to read it because our time is moving away. There was a test for false prophets in the Old Testament. Moses said if somebody comes along and does a sign or a wonder that comes true, but they tell you and entice you to go and follow after other gods, do not follow after them. In fact, Moses said, your job is to take them outside and stone them. They were to stone false prophets.
Now, in all of the history of Israel, I do not remember one time in the Old Testament—I could be wrong; I may be overlooking something—but I don't remember any time in the Old Testament where they stoned false prophets. I'm not aware of any. The sons of Korah stood up; they were consumed. But that was the work of God, that wasn't the nation judging them. You know who they did stone? The true prophets. It's the polar opposite of what they were supposed to do. In fact, Jesus condemned them for it in Luke 11: “Woe to you! For you build the tombs of the prophets, but your fathers killed them. So you are witnesses and approve the deeds of your fathers; because it was they who killed them, and you build their tombs” (vv. 47–48). Israel never stoned false prophets. They followed the false prophets. And the Israelites stoned the true prophets and killed them and opposed them.
False prophets were among the people, and they were a scourge. Jeremiah 2:8 “The priests did not say, ‘Where is Yahweh?’ and those who handle the law did not know Me; the shepherds also transgressed against Me, and the prophets prophesied by Baal and walked after things that did not profit.”
Jeremiah 5:31: “The prophets prophesy with lying, and the priests have dominion by their own hand; and My people love it so!”
So it has been—in every age, in every place, for every occasion, for every error, Satan has his man or his woman. It's not just men. There are plenty of female false teachers out there. Watch TBN. And the true prophet says, “Yahweh says such and so,” and the false prophet would come along and say, “Nah, Yahweh hasn't said that. That Jeremiah, he's nuts. That's not what Yahweh says at all. Yahweh says this.” And it would always undermine the true prophets. So when God spoke in the Old Testament, there were false prophets whom the devil would raise up to lead the people astray, and the people would go after them because they had itching ears and wanted to hear what the false teachers would say.
And so, Peter says, there will be false teachers among you. That is a sobering statement. In the church, among the people, inside the walls, traitors within the gate, wolves within the pen, imposters and pretenders with evil motives and even more evil teachings—they will be amongst the people.
Notice that Peter mentions that this is a future threat. Do you notice that? There will be false teachers among you. But here's what's interesting. In the rest of the chapter, he speaks of these teachers as if they were a current threat inside of the church. In fact, look down at verse 13: “Suffering unrighteousness as the wages of their unrighteousness, considering it a pleasure to revel in the daytime—they are stains and blemishes, reveling in their deceptions, as they feast with you.” These were people already in the church feasting with the people of God. It was a present reality.
Second Peter 2:15: “Forsaking the right way, they have gone astray, having followed the way of Balaam.”
Second Peter 2:17: “These are springs without water and mists driven by a storm.”
Second Peter 3:5: “When they maintain this, it escapes their notice that by the word of God the heavens existed long ago and the earth was formed out of water and by water.”
So Peter uses the language of a present threat, present people within the church, but at the beginning of it, he says there will be false teachers among you. Why is that? Because there has been, there is today, and there always will be, as long as the church exists in this world, false teachers among us. There always will be false teachers insinuating themselves into the true church to teach error and to lead people astray, so eternal vigilance is the mark of faithfulness. We have to know who these people are, we have to know what they teach, and we have to be willing and able to call it out and to stand for the truth.
So that's to dive into the text just a little bit. Let me give you an outline for these first three verses. There are three things here that Peter describes about the teachers. I'm going to probably give you three outlines here in just a second, so you can write down any one of these, and if you follow any one of these, you'll be able to follow me in the next week or two. There are three things that Peter describes about false teachers. First, their doctrines. In verse 1, he calls them destructive heresies. He describes their character in verse 2: “Many will follow their sensuality.” That tells you who these people are. And then he describes their judgment in verse 3: “Their judgment from long ago is not idle, and their destruction is not asleep.” Now, pretty much everything that Peter says for the rest of this book is going to be able to fall into those three categories: what they teach, who they are, and what's going to happen to them. Everything else we're going to read and study is going to fit under one of those headings. Peter's going to talk to us about what they teach, he's going to describe their teaching, he's going to tell us about their true nature and character, and he's going to tell us what God is going to do with them at the end.
Here's what Peter is getting at, and here's the second outline, if you like outlines. You and I should beware of false teachers lest we be deceived by their teachings (v. 1), seduced by their lusts (v. 2), or exploited by their greed (v. 3). We should beware of false teachers so that we won't be deceived by their teachings, seduced by their lusts, or exploited by their greed. Do you want to avoid being deceived? Do you want to avoid being seduced? Do you want to avoid being exploited? Then you need to beware of false teachers.
And to protect us from that danger, Peter exposes their destructive doctrines in verse 1, their depraved desires in verse 2, and their deserved doom in verse 3. That's another outline for you. So there's three outlines, each with three points. It's a trinity of trinities, all within the outline. Everything we can say about these men fits into those three columns: their destructive doctrines, their depraved desires, and their deserved doom. The harshest language in the New Testament is reserved for these men and women.
Notice their teaching is actually mentioned in all three verses. In verse 1, it's called destructive heresies; in verse 2, “the truth will be maligned”; in verse 3, it’s called false words. Their character is also mentioned in all three verses. In verse 1, they deny their Master, which means they are insolent, proud, rebellious, unsubmissive. Their sensuality is described in verse 2, and their greed in verse 3. And their judgment is mentioned in verse 1: “Bringing swift destruction upon themselves.” And then down in verse 3, “their judgment from long ago is not idle, and their destruction is not asleep.” Their teachings, their character, and their judgment—those are the things that Peter wants us to be aware of lest we be deceived by their teachings, seduced by their lust, or exploited by their greed. In lust and in greed they will seek to exploit you. You want to avoid that? Then know who the false teachers are. Mark them and avoid them. That is Peter's command.
So false teachers have been destined for this doom that's described in verse 3. This kind of helps us introduce chapter 2. Next week, we will look at more about their deceptive doctrines and their depraved desires and their deserved judgment.