Do please turn with me now in your own copies of the Scriptures to 2 Peter chapter 2, or turn in one of the church Bibles to page 1019. In the first part of 2 Peter chapter 2, Peter has had to focus not only on the positive teaching about growth in godliness and Christian perseverance, which was the burden of chapter 1, but now also on the challenges and threats that inhibit that growth that came from the false teachers. And in our passage this morning, beginning here in the second half of verse 10, Peter is continuing with his exposé of those false teachers so that chapter 2 as a whole actually provides really what amounts to twenty-two blistering verses of sustained denunciation and critique, which is a lot. Why does Peter spend so much time and so much attention dealing with the false teachers like this? Well if you work through the material of this chapter carefully, one of the things that becomes clear is that these are not just false teachers. They were, at least at some point, church members. They were leaders, perhaps even pastors or elders. At some point, they had made an apparently plausible profession of personal faith in Christ. They had claimed, remember, back in verse 1, that Jesus was the “Master who bought them,” even though later they went on to deny Him. And so Peter isn’t simply warning us about destructive heresy in general; he is warning us about apostasy in particular. And when you grasp that, you begin to understand why he spends so much time on it. He wants to do more than warn us and help us to avoid being deceived by other people. He wants to warn us about the danger of apostasy for ourselves.
That’s the big idea of that passage. We’re going to consider it under two headings, the first of which you will see in the second half of verse 10 running through verse 19 where Peter gives us what we will call an “anatomy of apostasy.” An anatomy of apostasy. And then secondly, in verses 20 through 22, Peter begins to draw some conclusions. You can see that by noticing the way that verses 20 and 21 each begin with the word, “For.” It signals to us that Peter is teasing out the implications of everything he has been telling us about these false teachers. So verses 10 through 19, an anatomy of apostasy. He’s going to show us what it looks like, what it does, what it produces. An anatomy of apostasy. Then 20 through 22, the alarm is sounding about apostasy. He wants us to really see and feel the urgency of the danger for ourselves. So the anatomy of apostasy and the alarm about apostasy. Before we consider those two themes, let’s pause once again and pray and then we’ll read the passage. Let us pray.
O Lord, open our eyes, open our hearts. Give to us faith to believe. Give to us appropriate trembling at the warnings of Scripture. Give to us a sense of the urgency of the truth here proclaimed. We look to You and we need Your blessing, so pour out Your Spirit as Your Word is read and preached, for we ask this in Jesus’ name, amen.
Second Peter chapter 2, beginning in the second half of verse 10:
“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, 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 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 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 overcomes a 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 own vomit, and the sow, after washing herself, returns to wallow in the mire.’”
Amen, and we praise God that He has spoken in His holy and authoritative Word.
I wonder what it will say on your tombstone? Do you ever think about that? What’s it going to say on your tombstone? On the grave of one Lola S. Holt, who died on July 4, 2004, you can read the moving inscription – “Oh well, whatever.” Or how about this one. See if this rings true for you – “Raised four beautiful daughters. Only one bathroom. Still there was love.” One of you were telling me the other day that you want the last line of your obituary to read – “At least his back doesn’t hurt anymore.” I wonder what you want yours to say? Whatever it is, there is one epitaph no one should want. Are you ready for it? Here is it – “He began well.” “She began well.” It’s a terrible epitaph; it’s tragic. Think about it. What good is beginning well if in the end you finish poorly?
A large part of Peter’s agenda in writing chapter 2 is to make sure that his readers can say much more than, “I began well,” when their time comes. He wants us to have the apostle Paul’s words boldly etched on our tombstones – “He fought the good fight. He finished the race. He won the prize.” Starting well is good, but finishing well is vital. Finishing well is vital. And so Peter gives us a very direct, very sobering portrait of what happens to those who, by all appearances at least, started well but did not endure.
The Anatomy of Apostasy
Look with me, first of all, at verses 10 through 19. Here in the first place is an anatomy of apostasy. An anatomy of apostasy. Peter highlights two things essentially. He focuses on the attitude of the false teachers and then on the behavior of the false teachers. Look at their attitude, first of all. We can sum it up by saying they are both arrogant and ignorant. They are arrogant and ignorant. He illustrates their arrogance by drawing a contrast and their ignorance by drawing a comparison. You can see the contrast in verses 10 and 11. Would you look there please, verse 10 and 11? “Bold and willful, they do not tremble as they blaspheme the glorious ones, whereas” – here’s the contrast – “whereas angels, though greater in might and power, do not pronounce a blasphemous judgment against them before the Lord.” Peter says these false teachers are bold and willful. That’s plain enough, isn’t it? They are arrogant, and the epitome of their arrogance is their astonishing failure to “tremble as they blaspheme the glorious ones,” whatever that means. Many commentators noticing a close parallel between these words and Jude 8 through 10 suggest “the glorious ones” here are actually demonic powers. So on this reading, Peter would be saying that not even the angels dare to pronounce judgment against demonic powers but leave all judgment to God, whereas by contrast, the false teachers are blasé about it and unconcerned about doing precisely that. That’s one way to read the passage.
A couple of considerations actually pull me in a different direction, however. First of all, the word translated in our version, “the glorious ones,” is really simply, “glories” – plural. “They blaspheme the glories.” And then I notice whenever “glory” is used in 2 Peter, it always applies to the person of the Lord Jesus Christ in some way. And so on balance, I think it best to take “glorious ones” as a reference not to demonic powers but to the “glories” of the Lord Jesus Christ. And that would mean Peter is saying something like this – While the false teachers boldly blaspheme against the glories of Christ, denying the Master who bought them, remember, partly without even a second thought, the angels, by contrast, exalted though they are in majesty and unfallen dignity and power, are remarkable models of modesty. They would not even pronounce a word of judgment even when it’s against the very false teachers who indulge in this blasphemy. They leave all judgment to the Lord.
The Arrogance of the False Teachers
That, I think, on balance is a more satisfactory way to understand what Peter is saying, but whichever way you take it, the contrast here between the angels and the false teachers is really very clear. Isn’t it? It’s meant to reveal their staggering arrogance. The exalted angels in modesty and humility won’t even offer so much as an appropriate word of rebuke, while these wicked men glibly blaspheme the glory of Christ Himself without a second thought.
Now we live in a time when heterodoxy is often acclaimed as heroic. Rejecting the ancient convictions received by God’s people from the Scriptures about who God is, about the authority and trustworthiness of the Bible, about who Jesus is and what He has done, about what it means to be male and female, made in the image of God, about the only way of salvation through faith alone in Christ alone, about what it means to walk in purity and piety before the Lord, people who reject these basic convictions received by God’s people from the very beginning are seen today as free thinkers, independent minds. And apparently there’s nothing more admirable in our particular cultural moment than that. And doubtless in the apostles’ time too, these false teachers also sounded sophisticated and clever in the ears of those who first heard them. But Peter sees right through them here, doesn’t he? He calls their rejection of the orthodox faith once for all delivered to the saints for what it really is. It is arrogance – “Bold and willful, they reject the truth.”
Peter wants us to be very cautious indeed about theological and doctrinal innovation. If it’s truly novel, brothers and sisters, the chances are it is much more the product of the intellectual arrogance of its proponents than it is a genuine discovery of some new truth that no one has found in more than two millennia of Christian reflection on holy Scripture. And if I may say so, this is part of the immense, continuing value of our confession of faith and our catechisms for the church today. They gather, you see, in one place. The best teaching of the whole church throughout the ages on all the major departments of Christian truth, so that if only we knew them better, we would be far better equipped to understand the Word of God in the same way that the people of God in every place and at all times have done. We would be far better equipped to resist attempts to revise and reject the orthodox faith that constantly bombard the church. It is not wisdom; it is arrogance, Peter says, that refuses to learn from our fathers in the faith, and it is not insight, but soul-destroying heresy that prizes theological innovation over theological fidelity. So the arrogance of these apostates is illustrated by this contrast with the angels in verses 10 and 11.
The Ignorance of the False Teachers
But then notice how Peter goes to the opposite end of the spectrum of created being in order, this time, to draw a comparison. While the arrogance of the false teachers offers a striking contrast with the angels, the ignorance of the false teachers provides a very close comparison, Peter says, to animals. You see that in verses 12 and 13? “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.” Notice he says they are acting irrationally, like creatures of instinct driven along by animal passion. The blasphemous errors they are spouting, Peter is teaching us, flow ultimately from a deep-seated ignorance. And that ignorance, that fundamental rejection of proper Spirit-enlightened, Scripture-informed rationality leads not just to a kind of cultural amnesia and moral madness that we see reeking havoc all around us today. It does that; of course it does. But far more chilling, Peter says, because they are like brute animals they are “born to be caught and destroyed. They will also be destroyed in their destruction suffering wrong as the wage for their wrongdoing.”
So listen. Here’s what he’s saying. If you embrace the ignorance and irrationality of life on your own terms – it may seem life on your own terms is strong and wise and secure and the way ahead – not so. Peter says it is irrational and it is arrogant. And if you embrace life on your own terms, life without the illumination of the Holy Spirit, life unsurrendered to the lordship of Jesus Christ, life without the light of the Word of God, do you see what happens? What does Peter say happens? Though the world may lionize you as a hero, Peter says the truth is, you are debasing yourself, dehumanizing yourself – “like irrational animals,” he says. And ultimately you doom yourself. And so it really matters that you think and how you think and what you think. Christians – this is so important in our particular day – Christians are not primarily feelers. We do not follow Jesus because He offers a more satisfactory path to maintaining emotional equilibrium or achieving or maintaining an upbeat demeanor in life or to discovering the power of positivity. No, no. Christians are, first of all, thinkers and knowers, and what we know of the truth of Christ inflames and informs and disciplines and regulates how we feel. And so Peter is highlighting their arrogance by appealing to a contrast with the humility of the angels and highlights their ignorance by comparing them with the animals. So much for their attitude.
The Immorality and Manipulation of the False Teachers
What about their behavior? Remember there’s always a connection between ethics and error, between theological convictions and moral consequences. In this case, Peter says their arrogance and their ignorance goes hand in hand with immorality and manipulation. Let me just simply point out those two realities – immorality and manipulation. Verse 13, “They count it pleasure to revel in the daytime.” They don’t even hide their sin under the cover of darkness. Verse 14, “They have eyes full of adultery, insatiable for sin.” It’s not just that they fall into sexual sin, you see; it’s that they have an insatiable appetite for it. Verse 18 says, “They even entice others by sensual passions of the flesh.” They are immoral, and also they are manipulative. Verse 14, “They entice unsteady souls.” Verse 18, “Speaking loud boasts of folly, they entice by sensual passions of the flesh those who are barely escaping from those who live in error.” In other words, they are preying upon those who are new to the Christian faith who don’t know any better and deceiving them and enticing them into moral and theological sin.
There is the very closest connection between the rejection of Christian convictions and the rejection of Christian morals. Very often, actually, it’s the embrace of anti-Christian morals, the embrace of outright immorality, that precedes a change of conviction about basic, Biblical truth. Here’s how it works – “In order to accommodate the sin that I want, I have to adjust the convictions with which I have been raised or the truth in which I have been discipled. I want to sleep with my girlfriend. I want to live an openly gay lifestyle. I want to pursue an adulterous affair. But so long as my conscience is informed by my convictions, I must always be miserable in my sin. So what will I do? I will adjust my convictions and reject the truth in order to make room for my sin.” And it doesn’t stop there. Peter says once you have made that move, then you need validation. You need approval; you need other people to say, “You’re doing the right thing. It’s okay. Keep going.” And so you begin, you set out to persuade others to join you. You tell them how unreasonably restrictive the Christian ethic really is. “God is love, after all. Jesus wants me to be happy, doesn’t He? In this enlightened, modern world, no one can really be expected to live a life of purity and modesty and chastity anymore, can they? It’s silly; needlessly restrictive.” That’s the argument. And so as one person falls, they try to persuade and entice others to join them. Apostasy, you see, is insidious, it is infectious, and it is deadly.
And Peter brings all of that together with the illustration of Balaam, son of Beor, in verse 15. Would you look there with me? Verse 15, “Forsaking the right way they have gone astray. They have followed the way of Balaam, son of Beor, who loved gain from wrongdoing but was rebuked for his own transgression; a speechless donkey spoke with human voice and restrained the prophet’s madness.” You remember the story of Balaam from Numbers 22. He was a pagan prophet who was hired by Balaak to curse Israel and the Lord prevented him. Every time he tried to curse Israel, instead he prophesied blessing. The original tactic frustrated Balaam, then tried a different approach. Christopher Green, one of the commentators, puts it like this. “Balaam also led Israel into idolatry and adultery. Having failed by direct means, he tried indirect ones. And since he could not alter God’s view of Israel, he tried to change Israel’s view of God.” So you can see how Balaam offers Peter a compelling parallel to the apostate false teachers plaguing the churches in his day. Can’t you?
And notice how things turned out for Balaam. What does the text say happens next? “He was rebuked by the mouth of a speechless donkey, who by the power of God spoke the Word of the Lord to him.” Now Peter is likely here engaging in some self-deprecating humor. If the false teachers are like Balaam, Peter is like the donkey who spoke the Word of the Lord to them and rebuked them. Because I am Scottish, every now and then I get kids, though most of them are older teenagers now, come and ask me to say, “Donkey!” They all saw the movie, “Shrek,” when it first came out. You remember the title character, the ogre, Shrek, is supposed to be Scottish. His best friend is a talking donkey. Well Peter wants you all to stop that right away! The preacher isn’t Shrek, okay? The preacher is the donkey! Alright, that’s out of my system now – back to 2 Peter!
Whatever self- deprecating humor Peter is using, his warning to the church, to these apostates, is actually deadly serious. Isn’t it? You see what he says about them in verse 17? First, they are “waterless springs” and they are “mists, driven by a storm.” Waterless springs cannot quench your thirst, you see. You may go to the well, but there’s no water for you there. That’s the point. They are like mists driven by a storm. They will quickly obscure the clarity of your spiritual vision. All of a sudden they leave you in a fog. Verse 19 says they promise freedom, but they are themselves slaves of corruption. That’s the narrative we often hear, isn’t it? A promise of freedom – “Don’t be so strict. Don’t be so narrow. You’re being legalistic, exclusionary. You will shut people out. You will turn them off. Our approach, you know, is more freeing. We are the grace people. We are the liberty people. We are the ones who will lift your burdens and set you free.” That’s what the false teachers were saying.
But Peter wants us to know that for all the promises of freedom that they made, they are themselves not free. Sensual passions hold them in bondage, and so instead of liberation, look where it will take you in the end if you follow them. Where will it take you? Verse 17, “For them, the gloom of utter darkness has been reserved.” It’s a picture of hell. A terrible picture of hell – utter darkness. The gloom of utter darkness. They sound enlightened, don’t they, but there’s no light in their future. They are heralded as leading lights, but their end is the gloom of utter darkness, Peter says. Don’t follow them. This is where it leads. Don’t follow them. It doesn’t bring freedom. Peter gives us a very strong, solemn account of what apostasy looks like, doesn’t he – an anatomy of apostasy.
The Alarm about Apostasy
Temporary and Superficial Knowledge of Jesus Christ
Very quickly now, we need to hear the alarm sounding in verses 20 and 22 as we close. Let me simply highlight the three things he tells us here. First of all, verse 20. It’s clear there is a kind of knowledge of Jesus Christ you can have that is sufficient to deliver you from what Peter calls “the defilements of the world,” at least temporarily and superficially. Peter is talking about false teachers, remember, who have “denied the Master who bought them.” They are not truly Christians. He’s saying, “Yes, they heard the Gospel; they found it compelling at some point. It swayed their minds; their consciences were stirred. They were drawn to the joy and the integrity they saw in the lives of true believers. They were swept up in what looked to everyone around them like a genuine conversion experience. They underwent some moral reformation in their lives. They joined the church. They seemed to be growing; they appeared, at least, to have escaped the defilements of the world. But it was all superficial at best.”
Friends, this is perhaps the most piercing note in the alarm that Peter sounds and I want to be sure you hear it. Please, please, do not be satisfied with mere moral reformation. Do not be satisfied with a few stirrings of emotion, a brief sense of spiritual interest. Don’t say to yourself like the Pharisee in Jesus’ parable, “I thank You, Lord, that I am not like other people! I’m religious. I go to church. I have escaped the defilements of the world.” That is not Christianity. But it was all the apostates in Peter’s churches had and it was no defense against disaster for them and it will be no defense against disaster for you.
Condition and Condemnation for Repudiating Jesus Christ
Secondly, if you hear and respond, albeit superficially to the Gospel, and then you, like these false teachers, repudiate Christ and turn your back on Him, your condition and your condemnation will be worse than had you never heard the Gospel at all. Do you see that in verses 20 and 21? “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. 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.”
Not all sins are equal. Not all sins are equal. Some, by their own nature and some by their several repetitions and aggravations are more heinous than others. Knowing about the Gospel and living as if it were not true, knowing that Jesus obeyed and bled and died for the salvation of sinners like me and you, while turning your back on Him and His way, is an aggravation of the sin of unbelief and that is a very solemn thing indeed. It would be better for you never to have even heard of the way of righteousness than to have heard it, understood it, and walked in your own way instead. Hear the warning. Hear it. The alarm is sounding.
The True Character of Those Who Repudiate Jesus Christ
And thirdly, Peter says, apostasy like this actually reveals our true character in the end. We may have looked to everyone like the real thing for a while, like a true Christian, but then when we turn our backs from the way of Christ and repudiate His grace and embrace lies, we are suddenly shown to be what we really are; what we’ve really always been. Look at verse 22. “What the true proverb says has happened to them: ‘The dog returns to its own vomit and the sow, after washing herself, returns to wallow in the mire.’” This is what dogs do. This is what pigs do, Peter says. They return to their vomit. They go back after washing for a time to wallow in the mire. Their nature hasn’t changed, he’s saying. It’s all been superficial and temporary. The heart hasn’t changed. You can wash a pig. You can perfume a pig. It’s still a pig. You can clean up your behavior. You can learn to watch your tongue, even become fluent in the peculiar vocabulary of the Christian life. You can maintain the highest standards of moral rectitude and be consistent in church and in the outward worship of God every Lord’s Day. But unless you have been born again, it’s like washing a sow, clean from the muck of the pig sty. It does not change your nature. You must, you must, you must be born again!
Jesus is more than a moral teacher. He’s interested in more than escaping the defilements of the world in your life. He’s more than just the object of your worship. He must be the object of your worship but He’s more than that. Peter calls Him, “our Lord and Savior.” You see, before you can be truly clean, before your worship can ever be really acceptable to Him, He must be your Redeemer, your Rescuer. He must set you free that you might be free indeed. Has He set you free? It’s not Christianity you need; it’s Christ. And if you don’t have Christ, whatever else it is that you have, it’s not Christianity!
The danger is apostasy and you and I, we need to search our hearts to make sure that we today, today, have fled for refuge to Jesus Christ. If we have settled for anything less, we are in grave, everlasting danger. I hope you hear the alarm sounding. Our only refuge is in Jesus. Let’s be sure to hide away in Him. Let us pray.
O Lord our God, as we consider now bread and wine, the emblems of our Savior’s dying love, His body broken on Calvary’s tree, His blood poured out for the remission of sins, we humble ourselves in the dust before You and we cry to You for Your mercy. Please, be to us a Rescuer, a Redeemer. We don’t simply want morality. We don’t want ethics. We don’t want a body of abstract philosophy. We want You, Lord Jesus. We need You. You are our only hiding place, so hear our cries, forgive our sins, save us. Make us clean from the inside out that we may be Yours indeed. For we ask this in Your holy name, amen.