Many Antichrists
You can listen to this sermon at The Proclamation Trust.
Pullquote
This spirit of heresy that is everywhere and is in every age the same. It simply comes out in new dress, new colors, and new form. Hymenaeus and Philetus are long ago dead. We shall never meet people who are precisely the same as them, but we certainly will meet people who have got the family likeness.
Comment
Dick Lucas offers a unique perspective on identifying first-century heresies, false teachers, and “small-a” antichrists—ones that can appear at any time in history. And, I think he’s on to something here.
When God inspired the Scriptures, He did not give us a precise, photorealistic picture of every false teacher. Instead, He provided a general outline, an “identikit,” of their main features. More importantly, He shows us the spirit of heresy itself. This spirit is always with us, in every place and every age, until Christ returns.
God did this on purpose. He wants to keep us from thinking we have permanently defeated those first-century or past heresies and will never face them again. Opposition to Christ and the Kingdom manifests itself in perennial forms, disappearing in one place, only to spring up in another, choking the life out of local Churches.
And I’m going to look at three particular things in verses 10b to 16 which make up this identikit by which we may recognize these men. Having said that, when we put it together this morning before coffee it will in fact be impossible to identify them. By that I mean it will be impossible to identify them in first century terms. Now, I always think that this is one of the most curious realities of New Testament study. I mean, we live in a time when modern scholarship has gone through these letters with a tooth comb, but the fact remains is that modern scholarship has been unable to give a precise identification of any of these groups of false teachers who are spoken of in the New Testament. That’s rather a remarkable fact, isn’t it? People have been quite unable to unearth who they were. I remember when I started to write The Bible Speaks Today edition of Colossians, that it was impossible to locate them in the first century and to be certain who they were. Now, perhaps that is not so strange in God’s providential wisdom. Because, you see, if we could say about Colossians, well, now, these tiresome fast-talkers of Colossians 2 were Valentinians. I mean, there is one commentary that says that. well you see then we would bother with them no longer would we we’d say well there aren’t any Valentinians around Sheffield as far as we can make out I went to Durham yesterday and didn’t meet any so we didn’t bother with them now that is not what we find in the New Testament what we find in the New Testament is what a great writer has called the spirit of heresy and I think this is a very wise thing that God has so ordered it through the inspiration of scripture I don’t think, incidentally, there could be any other explanation except the fact that God has superintended the writing of Scripture. What he wants us to read and understand is this spirit of heresy that is everywhere and is in every age the same. It simply comes out in new dress, new colors, and new form. Hymenaeus and Philetus are long ago dead. we shall never meet people who are precisely the same as them, but we certainly will meet people who have got the family likeness.
Transcription
Please note: These transitions are completed by an AI model or agent, which does a very good job. But, these transcriptions are not edited for grammar or style — they are presented here as a convenient tool for writers who wish to search, cite, cut, and paste Dick Lucas quotes and views on various topics or doctrines.
We are looking after us here, we are being looked after royally, aren’t we? Central heating this morning, ladies and gentlemen. You can’t complain at that, can you? Except for the cold morning that makes it necessary. So let’s pray together as we continue to search the scriptures. Our Heavenly Father, we thank you as we come to you in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ for our fellowship together. We thank you for this church and all that goes on there. We thank you for the joy of meeting to search the scriptures. And we ask that as we learn more and more of the mind of Christ, we may be able to teach more effectively, powerfully, and helpfully. So do be with us, we pray. Draw near to us by your Holy Spirit. For Christ’s sake. Amen. Amen. Right, well, we turn now to chapter 2 as we go on searching the scriptures. Chapter 2 of 2 Peter, verse 10b through to the end. This is going to be a tough and rough journey. This is the passage I suppose I least look forward to as we come face to face with these troublesome and unprincipled men. However, it’s a fascinating paragraph and I do pray that by God’s goodness we may discover important things from it for our ministry and for other people’s ministry. I think I’ll read it in two parts. I’ll start by reading the first section, which I call 10b to 16. 10b to 16 of 2 Peter 2. Bold and willful, they are not afraid to revile the glorious ones. Whereas angels, they’re greater in might and power, do not pronounce a reviling judgment upon them before the Lord. But these, like irrational animals, creatures of instinct, born to be caught and killed, reviling in matters of which they are ignorant, will be destroyed in the same destruction with them, suffering wrong for their wrongdoing. They count it pleasure to revel in the daytime, their blots and blemishes reveling in their dissipation, carousing with you. They have eyes full of adultery, insatiable for sin. they entice in 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 rebuke for his own transgression a dumb ass spoke with human voice and restrained the prophet’s madness Well, that’s fairly rich and strong language, isn’t it? And we’ll have to discover this morning why such strong language is used and how it is justified. Now, I think I’ve already made it plain that I can’t give these lectures coherence and get over the ground in time if I stop at all the particularly difficult details. Let me say that there are some very difficult details in this passage this morning. I have spent many hours on Borkum and Green and Kistamaker and so on, and I guess you’ll have to spend many hours on them if you’re going to discover what these strange phrases mean, like, for example, 10b, where, as far as I know, no wholly satisfactory explanation has yet been given as to what it means to revile the glorious ones. So I do want to say that by way of apology. I’m not going to look at all those details. I’m not going to solve problems that may have puzzled you for many years, and you came this morning hoping that with some magic key I’d unlock them. I don’t think I will be able to do that, because I want to go right through the passage, getting the thrust of it. I want to see the wood rather than the trees, because I believe that’s the most important thing to do in this short time. Now, what we have here in 10b to 16 is a kind of identikit of these rather too successful but very unprincipled men. And I’m going to look at three particular things in verses 10b to 16 which make up this identikit by which we may recognize these men. Having said that, when we put it together this morning before coffee it will in fact be impossible to identify them. By that I mean it will be impossible to identify them in first century terms. Now, I always think that this is one of the most curious realities of New Testament study. I mean, we live in a time when modern scholarship has gone through these letters with a tooth comb, but the fact remains is that modern scholarship has been unable to give a precise identification of any of these groups of false teachers who are spoken of in the New Testament. That’s rather a remarkable fact, isn’t it? People have been quite unable to unearth who they were. I remember when I started to write The Bible Speaks Today edition of Colossians, that it was impossible to locate them in the first century and to be certain who they were. Now, perhaps that is not so strange in God’s providential wisdom. Because, you see, if we could say about Colossians, well, now, these tiresome fast-talkers of Colossians 2 were Valentinians. I mean, there is one commentary that says that. well you see then we would bother with them no longer would we we’d say well there aren’t any Valentinians around Sheffield as far as we can make out I went to Durham yesterday and didn’t meet any so we didn’t bother with them now that is not what we find in the New Testament what we find in the New Testament is what a great writer has called the spirit of heresy and I think this is a very wise thing that God has so ordered it through the inspiration of scripture I don’t think, incidentally, there could be any other explanation except the fact that God has superintended the writing of Scripture. What he wants us to read and understand is this spirit of heresy that is everywhere and is in every age the same. It simply comes out in new dress, new colors, and new form. Hymenaeus and Philetus are long ago dead. we shall never meet people who are precisely the same as them, but we certainly will meet people who have got the family likeness. I had a remarkable illustration of that because I gave a presentation to our staff meeting this week on cultic Christianity. When I’d been in America last month, I met somebody who was an expert on it, who had written a book about it, and I read his book on coming back in the plane, and it really excited me, and I thought that I would draw from his book sort of four or five leading factors about cultic Christianity and present those to the staff. And I was very grateful that he’d written this book and gathered all this amazing information, because I think it’s possible that we should see a good deal of cultic Christianity in the next ten years. What came out of it all was that in the end I discovered that you don’t need to write a book on it really at all, because all the things that he talks about and brings together in his book very ably are actually here in the New Testament. And I hope it doesn’t sound overconfident, but I don’t really think that there’s much danger of the young people at St. Helen’s Bishopsgate going into a cultic Christianity, because they listen to a regular expository ministry. And therefore, all the things that are in this book, they are hearing about from the pulpit as the year goes on. that actually the seeds of cultic Christianity, of extremism, of fanaticism, are to be found in all these books of the New Testament. I find that very interesting. The early church had just the same problems as we do, but they might have called them by different names. So that a regular Bible teaching ministry will unearth all these things and forewarn people. Just one thing about this before we plunge in. One of the things that is slightly off-putting, I think, and slightly difficult to come to terms with, is that when you actually meet these people, for example, in 2 Peter, they seem to combine things which, in our experience, are contradictory. You know, you’re looking at this picture of the spirit of heresy in one of these letters of the New Testament, and you suddenly say, oh yes, that’s antinomianism. And then in the same letter you find people up to asceticism. And you wonder how they can actually meet together on the same plate. I think actually there are very strange marriages and heresy and all sorts of things do meet together but I don’t think we’re meant to worry ourselves about that as we expand the New Testament, as we study it we shall constantly find things that are very close to what we’re seeing around us today and if the cap fits, were it really, is what one must say well, to change the metaphor then let’s take a deep breath and plunge into these murky waters. And let me promise you that within 15 minutes, a clear picture is going to emerge of these false teachers. But I want to say, since I’ve used the illustration of Sherlock Holmes before, steady, my dear Watson. You remember that Watson was pretty much of a fool and jumped to conclusions. I don’t want you to jump to conclusions. Within 15 minutes, you may be tempted to jump to conclusions and say, well, I know who these false teachers are. I want to suggest in about half an hour’s time that the solution is not perhaps quite as clear as we might think. Right, well let me mention three things then from verses 10b to 16. I don’t claim any particular value in the titles I’m going to give them. You may be able to think of much better titles, but I’m trying to get to the heart of what are sometimes rather mysterious allusions. Here’s the first title. their reckless attitude to supernatural realities. Their reckless attitude to supernatural realities. Bold and willful, they’re not afraid to revile the glorious ones. Now the complex thing here is that in Jude, the glories or the glorious ones are undoubtedly good angels. Whereas in 2 Peter, it seems more likely, but no one can prove it, that the glorious ones here are the fallen angels. oceans of ink have been spilt on that, I think you’ll be grateful that I’m not going to burden you with all the arguments. I don’t even understand them fully myself. Let me read Richard Borkham in a very sensible comment, it seems to me, on the possibility that these are fallen angels who are being insulted and reviled by the new teachers. Quote, The most plausible view is that in their confident immorality, the false teachers were contemptuous of demonic powers. When rebuked for immoral behavior and warned of the danger of falling into the power of the devil and sharing his condemnation, they laughed at the very idea, denying that the devil could have any power over them, and speaking of the powers of evil in skeptical and mocking terms. They may even have doubted the very existence of supernatural powers of evil. Now that comes from the commentator who has perhaps written more exhaustively on this letter than any other this century, and I think, therefore, he’s worth hearing. And we know of this kind of contemptuousness in radical theology, don’t we, towards celestial things, and not least, of course, to the devil and his angels. And in this attitude of contemptuous arrogance, these men, we’re told, verse 11, are rushing in where angels from seer cells would fear to tread. Now, this attitude of scoffing, of insulting, of being a cynic, is actually going to be underlined in chapter 3, verse 3, where we’re told that one of the marks of these men is that they were scoffers, and we’ll come to that after coffee this morning. And the scoffer and the cynic by nature laughs at supreme realities, and he laughs at any idea of the eschatological future, simply because he doesn’t understand it. Yet we ask the question, how can these teachers talk so rashly and foolishly about things that they don’t understand? And we get an explanation of that, I think, in verse 12. Here it says that these people, like irrational animals, creatures of instinct, born to be caught and killed, revile in matters of which they are ignorant. There’s a very strong emphasis in this letter on the ignorance of these new teachers, the spiritual ignorance, of course. They may have been intellectually very sophisticated, but spiritually they were ignorant. And that emphasis will continue into chapter 3. now I was going to read you an application of this from Kistemaker’s commentary I think I won’t do that partly because I left it in my bag and partly because time is not on our side but it’s a very interesting application now I think he gets it wrong because he applies it to men generally what he says is that cursing and swearing and using the name of God and of Jesus Christ and of heaven and hell and so on as part of our expletives is a mark of the ignorance, the insensitivity to eternal things that the natural man shows. And I think that’s a very good point. I mean, well, if you don’t meet it, your children will meet it at school, or your grandchildren. But we do meet it, don’t we? We can’t avoid it. And the more you think about it, we become so immune to it that we really aren’t shocked as we ought to be. It thing, isn’t it, that when the ordinary person in their office uses expletives, they mix up words which refer to things like human dung with words like God and Jesus Christ. You can’t really have anything more insulting than that, can you? I mean, these words that are the words that they use to express their utter frustration and their annoyance are words about the most glorious realities in the universe. And Kistemaker, in his The commentary refers to this in terms of the plague of cursing in society today. But of course, he’s not actually talking about ordinary men here, is he, in 2 Peter? He’s referring here to people who were teaching others, and who seem to have been accepted in some of these young churches, and who were having a great influence on many people who were following them. It’s all the more extraordinary, therefore, that they were using this careless language about eternal things. Now, if your children come back from school using that kind of language, one of the things you might say to them is, that language is beastly language. And that’s really what the writer is saying here, do you see? He’s referring to these people as behaving and speaking like animals. It’s animal language, it’s animal behavior, it’s beastly language. well nevertheless it is very strange isn’t it these Christian teachers have so or so called Christian teachers have so little respect for the tremendous themes of another world and of a supernatural faith that they dismiss these things insultingly they mock them I remember Henry Chadwick of all people accusing I think it was the Archbishop of York of what he called academic terrorism which was I thought a very fine description of dismissing things like the virgin birth and the resurrection of the body as though they didn’t matter as though those who actually believed in them were somehow simpletons as though the really intelligent people dismissed that kind of thing as junk theology well I don’t know whether there’s anything here of that but it is extraordinary isn’t it that these people are prepared to speak of eternal things the invisible things of heaven the future realities in this insulting and brash and arrogant way they mock it so that’s the first line in our portrait that is being drawn towards their reckless attitude to celestial realities. Secondly, their reckless attitude to the Church’s fellowship and its feasts, verse 13-14. They counted a pleasure to revel in the daytime, blots and blemishes, reveling in their dissipation, carousing with you. Now, I’m going to assume it can’t actually be proved, but the best commentators seem to think that it is implied here that Peter is referring to the love feasts of the early Christians. We actually know jolly little about those love feasts. But what we do know is that when the Christians met together to eat together and to celebrate together, their feasts were markedly in contrast with the similar feasts in paganism. We know that from 1 Corinthians. The feasts of people meeting together in the pagan temple were always marked in the end, weren’t they, by looseness of moral standards and immorality quite explicitly. The temple prostitution was a mark of pagan religion. And you remember how Paul in 1 Corinthians commands the Christians not to be present in those temple feasts, even though the Maran Corporation may be present, where not to be, because of the danger of immorality and because of the associations between pagan belief and immorality and so on. Now it must have been really very marvellous, must it, in the first century, when the Christians came out of that and had their own feasts and their own celebrations, that the real difference was this matter of true love and purity. That must have been a very bright light in the world, wasn’t it? Here were people loving one another, but lust did not rear its ugly head. Here were people who knew what it was to have great joy and celebrate together, but they did it with decency and order. And here are people coming into the church, you see, with their teaching and their attitudes, and seeming to want to turn the clock back. Seeming to want to bring into the feasts of the Christians these elements of gross self-indulgence. Now, at first sight, it is very difficult to understand why, if they behaved like this, they did not reveal and expose themselves straight away. I’m going to come back to that later. I simply want at the moment to draw this identicate and the very colourful picture, the very strong colours that Peter uses. Their reckless attitude to spiritual realities, invisible spiritual realities, and their reckless attitude to the Church’s love feasts, its fellowship, its worship. Thirdly, we notice in verses 15 and 16 their reckless attitude to their own gifts and ministry. Forsaking the right way, they’ve gone astray, they’ve followed the way of Balaam. Now Balaam, as you know, is a most gifted prophet. He’s the subject of many famous sermons, by the way, in Christian history. And if you’re a collector of sermons, you probably will have some on your shelves. I must stop for a moment and say that liberal commentators tend to say that Peter is most unfair on Balaam. It has been a commonplace in radical theology and radical commentaries of the New Testament to say that Balaam gave a very honourable reply to Balak and that the blame that is attached to Balaam comes actually from contemporary rabbinical writings in the first century. It was they who blackened his reputation. well you won’t agree with that and I don’t agree with that and I think I would ask you nevertheless to turn back to Numbers 22 just for a second to be quite clear that we are right to see Balaam as an example to be shunned it’s well worth by the way a sermon or two I hope some of you will preach on Balaam if you haven’t before we’ll join him at verse 5 when Balak sent messengers to Balaam and said behold a people has come out of Egypt Numbers 22 5 they cover the face of the earth and their dwelling opposite me come now and curse this people for me since they are too mighty for me perhaps I shall be able to defeat them and drive them from the land for I know that he whom you bless is blessed and he whom you curse is cursed Now that’s part of the evidence that it’s very strong in numbers that Balaam was a very effective prophet, a very gifted man. He’s a very ambiguous character, but then that’s true of these new teachers. So the elders of Moab, verse 7, and the elders of Midian departed with the fees for divination in their hand, and they come to Balaam, and they ask him to come and curse the people of God. And already we ought to be suspicious in verse 8 when Balaam says, Well, will you come and lodge this night, and I’ll bring back word to you as the Lord speaks, I’ll go and pray about it. You know, we’re actually here on very familiar territory that any pastor knows well. This is the territory when, for example, one of your young people wants to marry somebody who’s not a Christian, and they come to you to wrestle over it and ask you if we might pray about it, presumably, to see if the Lord will change his mind about the standards that he’s laid down. You’ve all met that in your pastoral work, haven’t you? Isn’t there a way through this? Can’t we wriggle our way through this? It isn’t prayer that we need in that situation, but simple obedience, isn’t it? So this is the situation. I just wanted to say that, you see, we’re not far off ordinary territory here. Balaam very much wants to go with Balak. That’s the meaning of the story in Numbers. And so he said, we’ll pray about it. You stay in my guest house and I’ll tell you tomorrow morning. And Balaam said to God, Balak, the son of Zippor, etc., has sent to me saying all this. And God said to Balaam, verse 12, you shall not go with them. You shall not curse the people for they are blessed. So Balaam rose in the morning and said to the princes, sorry, I can’t come with you. Verse 15, Balak obviously knows his man. So he adds to the leer of money the leer of snobbery. And he gets the right honourable Lord Snoops to come. Once again, Balak sent princes, more in number and more honourable than they. And they come to Balaam and say, look, this will be a big jump up the social ladder for you. Thus says Balak, the son of Zippor, Let nothing hinder you from coming to me. I’ll show you, do you great honour. Whatever you say to me, I will do. Come curse this people for me. Now it is this next verse that is the source of contention. how do you understand it when Balaam says though Balaam were to give me his house full of silver and gold I could not go beyond the command of the Lord my God to do less or more now in the English translation it is ambiguous isn’t it it could sound like a noble refusal whatever you offer me I will never go back on God’s law but it isn’t of course that at all what he is saying is I am a servant of a sovereign God I’m not able to do what you want I’m not at liberty my mouth my message my prophetic ministry belongs to him he orders it as he wants nevertheless verse 19 pray Terry here another night and I’ll go and ask the Lord again and the Lord this time very significantly and this is in keeping with a good deal in the Bible gives him permission verse 21 so Balaam rose in the morning and saddled his ass but God’s anger was kindled as he went. Now, you know, that’s a completely consistent story, isn’t it? That’s exactly in line with God’s dealing with his rebellious children. God refuses that we should be rebellious, but if in the end we determine to be so, then you go and be rebellious and I will visit my anger upon you. That is the only way in which I will show you that I am sovereign. Now, if that is so, Balaam is a very significant picture in the Old Testament. I take him to being as I say exceptionally well endowed with prophetic gifts but the fees and flattery of Balak are irresistible how many ministries have been ruined by flattery for example I’m afraid in the Church of England many I remember somebody who I know quite well actually who was visited once this is just a story for the Anglicans the others needn’t listen because it may make them sick said listen I remember this friend of mine he was visited by someone from some central secretariat and the man had tea together with him and then the conversation came round to responsibility in the church and questions were asked supposing you were to be a person and of course he meant of course to be a bishop supposing you were to do this would you find it difficult to do this and that and the other and my friend showed him the door immediately I think quite rightly. That’s not the way Christians should do business together, is it? No, I think that this is precisely what these people were doing with Berlin. They were saying, look, here’s the situation. We’re able to use you, and you could have a great influence if you would just change your message. Now the result of force in the end was tragedy, but tragedy not only for Balaam but for the people of God. They were led into immorality by Balaam. Now I spent enough time on this identikit. I said within 15 minutes you would be able to recognize this person. First they mock at anything they can’t understand. That’s very characteristic of radical theology. Secondly they contaminate their fellow believers because of their self-indulgence, their new morality if you like. And thirdly, they pervert their own gifts and ministry for personal advantage. So I ask this very important question. I think it’s one of the most important questions that we have to ask on 2 Peter. What is this picture? What does it represent? Who are these people? Now let me give you the obvious answer, which I personally don’t think is the right answer, but which is the obvious answer. The obvious answer is to say that we have here a clear portrait of unregenerate carnality. In other words, a man of the world. So that we would say, and this may be right, I’m not wanting to be dogmatic this morning, I’m putting this before you and I would love you to tell me what you think over coffee. It may be that one of the messages of 2 Peter is simply to bring to our notice the curse of an unconverted ministry. Now obviously all down the ages an unconverted ministry has been a very heavy burden to Christian congregations. Trollope knew this perfectly well and gave us some unforgettable portraits of that as you know if you read, if you listened, I’ve forgotten the name of that place now. What was the name of it? Barchester, yes. Well you know we sit in front of our telly with Barchester and it makes us laugh but it isn’t actually a laughing matter is it when you have clergy like that. So it may be that 2 Peter is simply saying that even in the early church, that kind of unconverted, ambitious, worldly, indulgent, unbelieving, ignorant ministry was already becoming a menace to the churches. I would be happy if that is what 2 Peter is saying, because it is certainly a menace and ought to be exposed to what it is. However, I think there is another explanation, and I want now to give this to you. let me ask you to turn to 1 Corinthians chapter 3 verses 1 to 4 I think it is because I’m studying 1 Corinthians at the moment very seriously for some lectures I want to give next year that I have found 1 Corinthians such a help in understanding 2 Peter if that doesn’t sound too Irish I see why it should really because it’s the same era isn’t it, same period one author is Paul, one author is Peter but presumably they’re meeting the same problems now I think the first four verses of 1 Corinthians 3 opened a window to me to Peter which possibly gives a more convincing explanation of these new teachers who trouble Peter and Paul so much but I brethren 1 Corinthians 3 1 could not address you as spiritual men by the way I hope you all know that spiritual does not mean what we mean by spiritual means simply Christian. It’s technical language in the New Testament. An unspiritual man in the New Testament is simply an unregenerate man. A spiritual man is a regenerate man. All that stuff we used to hear about the spiritual and carnal and holiness talks is not scriptural. The spiritual man is the Christian man. But he says although you are Christian men, he recognizes they are Christian men, he says I can’t address you as Christian men. That’s the meaning of that. I have to address you as, and he gives two descriptions of them. First, men of the flesh, which is his normal description of the man of the world. And then his second description as babes in Christ. Now isn’t that a remarkable verse? You see, he knows that he’s writing, actually, to a very gifted Christian community. But it’s a very immature community. They are babes in Christ. They’re not men in understanding. And so he can’t write to them as a Christian church. That’s a very devastating thing to say, isn’t it? But as worldly men. You would be very hurt in your congregation if somebody wrote to you and said, I can’t really address your congregation as a Christian congregation because there are so much babies in Christ that they’re really like men of the world. And he goes on, as you know, to show the signs of this in chapter 3, jealousy and strife amongst you and so on. But you will notice that one of the real signs going through 1 Corinthians, and I find this so interesting, it comes out in chapters 4, 5, 6, is their ignorance. So that Paul is constantly saying in chapter 6, do you not know that? Don’t you know that? Don’t you know that? You are ignorant, aren’t you? And notice where the ignorance goes at the end of chapter 6 in 1 Corinthians. It’s linked with immorality. Don’t you know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit? well no wonder you’re getting into such a mess on moral issues see here’s baby Christianity immature Christianity it lacks a deep understanding and so it easily behaves in a way that is parallel to the way in which the world behaves if you want one phrase if I could pass on one phrase to you which I think gives the clue to this it is that phrase from Romans that famous verse in Romans 12 verse 2. Do not be conformed to this world. Now that Paul can say that at the end of his letter to the Romans, he feels there are some people who need all the instruction he’s given them in the letter to the Romans in order that he may urge them not to be conformed to this world. So to the apostles, it was a real possibility that Christians to whom they wrote in these early churches could still be, despite the wonders that had happened to them, conformed to this world. Now, coming back to 2 Peter, that is the clue I want to put before you. You see, if you’ve got this totally unrealistic view of the New Testament churches that you get today, oh, that we could get back to apostolic times, oh, that we could be apostolic churches. I mean, I don’t think I need to say this to you. These apostolic churches have many problems that we have today. And one of the problems they had was this Christian immaturity. A disease so bad, incidentally, that it needs the whole epistle to the Romans to deal with it. Now, if that is so, come back to my identikit portrait. I want to ask you, does this not throw light on these three marks that I sketched out for you from verses 10b to 16? Could this not, for example, throw light on their behavior at the Christian feasts? You see, does not the immature Christian want his celebrations to be as similar to those that he has known in the world? Now, the obvious candidate as an immature Christian, of course, is the youth. I know that we can rationalize this and say that we’ve got to put on Christian rock concerts in order to meet the youth of our area. but is it not possible to look at that situation another way around and say that that kind of entertainment evangelism that kind of Christian celebration is likely to be much more enjoyable to people who behaved exactly like that than they were unregenerate I’m personally, of course I’m an old square but I’m not fully convinced of some of these Christian rock concerts that are supposed to be evangelistic It seems to me that the entertainment culture is so strong in the meeting, so strong incidentally, that the speaker hardly gets a few minutes to say anything. Are we really so sure that our motives are simply that we want to reach the outsider? Or is it really the kind of thing that we enjoy? And those are serious questions, aren’t they? See, if our celebrations, if the way in which we express love to one another as young Christians is not very far removed from the way that the world expressed love to one another. Well, it won’t be very long before the way we express love to one another as Christians will lead to the beginnings of immorality. I love the uninhibited expressions of affection amongst young Christians. But somebody said to me, we have a wonderful time on Sunday nights at St. Helens, thank God, when a very large number of young people come to us. But one of the younger staff said to me at the staff meeting this week, he said, you know, we’re getting very huggy on Sunday night. I don’t, you know, I love it when these young, you see a couple of girls coming in who come to know one another and they hug one another as they come into church. I don’t want to say that I’m against that. But I am an older pastor and I do know the dangers. when it becomes boy and girl recognizing and greeting one another like that it is often so that after such a hug the situation is not quite the same as it was before a certain point on the compass has changed now you know if young people heard me say this I’m not saying it to them I’m saying it to you and many of you are older and experienced pastors you know these things but you know does it not throw some light on these new teachers if they were in fact immature teachers immature people and yet had found themselves in a position of responsibility teaching would it not be less likely that they could see the danger of this kind of Christian celebration secondly couldn’t it throw light on their attitude to ministry again you see there are no rose colored spectacles and the New Testament. Turn back one page in your New Testament. Turn back one page to 1 Peter chapter 5 and verse 2. Now I simply want to ask you, why did the apostles need to write commands like this? 1 Peter 5.2 Tend the flock of God that is your charge, not by constraint but willingly, not for shameful gain but eagerly, not as domineering over those in your charge but being examples of the flock. Why is it necessary to write that? Well, I don’t need to give you the answer. Because those forms of immature ministry were emerging. Immature Christianity is easily flattered. Immature Christianity is easily captured by the love of gain and money. Immature Christianity does love to domineer other people and make authority an exercise in a sort of power trip, ego trip. I remember with my curacy, I was assistant to a most godly man who had taken over a parish which was fairly ungodly. And my dear erector was absolutely determined never to have a church warden who wasn’t converted. So one of the women of the church wardens died, we had to appoint another one. There wasn’t anybody to appoint. So the months went by, nobody was appointed. He was a man with a very strong will, and he had no intention of having unconverted leaders in the church. Since there was no one suitable to be a leader in that regard, no one was appointed. People used to visit him, mention it at church council meetings, when was there going to be an appointment? There never was. And then one of the businessmen was converted, wonderfully converted. A younger businessman was immediately appointed. What a disastrous appointment it was. It went to his head. I’ll never forget it. It seemed to change his personality. He began to lay down the law to everybody. He got over it in the end. He found his own balance in the end. But it’s what the New Testament is full of, isn’t it, that we shouldn’t lay hands suddenly on people? Because it goes to people’s heads, this authority, when we are immature. And then thirdly, could this not throw light on their message? You see, immature Corinth has a realized eschatology message, doesn’t it? Do you remember chapter 4, verse 11? We haven’t time to turn it up. Already you are rich, already you are kings. And what is the great theological problem in Corinth? Why does Paul have to spend the whole of chapter 15 talking about resurrection? Well, because that really isn’t of much interest to the church in Corinth. They don’t really understand the resurrection of the body, and they’re really not concerned about the future, because theirs is an eschatological message, a now message. It is very interesting, isn’t it, that that 15th chapter comes there in that letter? I think it’s a most interesting fact. Why were the Corinthians in need of that instruction? Well, because they were immature. well now tentatively that’s where Sherlock Lucas has got I would like to hear what you have to say to me afterwards I realise that this portrait of gross self-indulgence and naked ambition could be seen quite rightly as a description of a child of Satan but I want to ask you are not the seeds of all these things in all of us and if we did not grow spiritually from the beginning of our discipleship and if in fact we were unrestrained in our lives because we had for example a false doctrine of Christian freedom like these people had as we are going to see later on is it not possible that but for the grace of God we should have gone in that direction too this is the soil out of which apostasy grows now we must hasten on and I’m going to look now at verses 17 to 22 and I will be brief and I’m going to give you if I may four headings about their ministry first their ministry was disillusioning verses 17 to 18 These are waterless springs and mists driven by a storm. For them the nether gloom of darkness has been reserved for uttering loud boasts of folly. They spoke great things, but when you came to this oasis in the desert longing to quench your thirst, you found that the spring had dried up. When in a dry and thirsty land you saw at last the storm clouds moving along or mist forming and you longed for moisture to be deposited on the dry land, what a terribly disappointing thing when nothing happened. There was no refreshment, there was no water. I’m not going to stop on that. The ministry of these people was a disillusioning one. Afterwards you realized that nothing substantial had happened. I won’t stop on that but I do think we need to draw attention to this fact that you can have a great deal of noise and a great deal of activity and a great many claims but when all the captains and the kings have departed and you add up what has really happened spiritually not very much has happened have you been in that situation? I think most of us have secondly their ministry was dangerous It’s verse 18b. They entice with licentious passions of the flesh. Now who do they entice? Very, very important text here. Men who have barely escaped from those who live in error. Who are these people? That’s the young convert. Remember 2 Peter’s doctrine of escape? Christianity is escaping from the corruptions that are in the world through lust. And one day, like Noah, escaping when the judgment comes. So the mark of the young convert is just beginning to escape. when we got into our guest house last night we were just in time to see that crocodile program did you see it? it was rather marvelous of these little crocodiles being born and then mother takes them and this vast mother takes them down to the river and deposits them and they swim away but while she’s away depositing 20 new children the other predators come in and start eating the little crocodiles she comes rushing back you see the young are very very vulnerable aren’t they apparently only one in ten of those little crocodiles ever lives there are a lot of predators around and the characteristic of these people is that they work amongst the young Christian, the babies again at our staff meeting this week we were looking at this London Church of Christ some of you will perhaps know of this church it has a number of offshoots now beginning in Britain comes originally from Boston and it is one of these exclusive cults but it’s very very close to Christianity at first and we were talking about it in terms of the student work and I was pointing out a paper that the UCCF travellers have written for one another on it because it’s in the Christian unions that these people largely recruit they worked largely amongst the immature untutored baby Christians in the colleges we certainly lost people to the London Church of Christ I doubt if there is any evangelical church that has not lost people to them so this is a very dangerous ministry isn’t it the ministry that gobbles up the young immature tender Christian how do they manage to do this thirdly their ministry was deceitful and I’m sorry that at the moment I’m not going to have time to deal with it as I ought I’m going to come back to it when I summarize next week because as you know this is the characteristic language of 2 Peter the gospel is always reviewed thought of in 2 Peter as promise and the gospel is always thought of in 2 Peter as liberation, freedom. So if the new teachers promised freedom, you see this is a very, very close copy of the gospel. They used precisely the same vocabulary but they were actually offering something that was false. They had in a word a gospel for the Christians. I sometimes said this to our young people. I said, if we go out tracting today, we’re going out tracting non-Christians. If I see any of you tracting Christians, there’ll be trouble between you and me. I say this because we had quite a lot of that in London a few years ago. Christians tracting Christians. That’s a very unholdsome game, isn’t it? Trying to add to those Christians a particular extra. And the cults, I noticed this when I read my paper this week to the staff, The cults, actually one of the four points I made, was that the cults always offer a bigger promise than the gospel. A greater experience. You see this cultic sign in a great many quite respectable Christian bodies. The Full Gospel Businessmen’s International. They offer a fuller gospel. And when they started to work in the congregation we have at St. Helens on Tuesday, I find they were going up to young Christians and saying something like this. What do you hear from Dick on Tuesdays is grand. were so glad you’ve been converted, but you know there’s more to it that you don’t hear from this pulpit. I can tell you, I soon chased them out of the building. I can be quite rough when it comes to it, if it may not look like it. I’m very rough with Christians like that. Again, you can see this in many movements. You can see it, actually, can’t you, in the old, old holiness movements, in the deeper and higher life movements. You can even say it, with respect to my dear friend here, in some of the older teaching at Keswick, can’t you? a gospel for Christians sin on Monday, sin of the Christian the gospel for the Christian on Tuesday surrender to that gospel on Wednesday and then the fullness of the Spirit on Thursday what is that but a second gospel? it is saying as a Christian you’re dissatisfied aren’t you? we have good news for you we do have a gospel for Christians, our gospel for Christians is the same gospel as for sinners we never exhaust it there’s nothing greater than that there is no power bigger than that than that which the gospel offers there is no as Hanley Mole said when he saved the day in the early days of the holiness movement it was Hanley Mole that brought those people back to sanity when he made this magnificent statement he said there is no separable gospel of the spirit only one gospel not a gospel of Christ for sinners and the gospel of the spiritual saints. There’s only one gospel. Christ is sufficient to saints and sinners. Notice about these people in 19 that they promised them something that they themselves, of course, have not got. And talking about that holiness teaching, one of the things that makes me love John Wesley is that though I deplore his holiness teaching, he was always honest enough to say he’d never got it himself. Well, isn’t that nice? But I mean, take the great… Let me ask, I know it’s a very provocative question, but have you ever met someone who is in what I call the gospel of healing ministry? Have you ever met one of those people who was fully fit? The man who came to my theological college to teach us about healing, he used to come once a year to our college. He was blind. Isn’t there something strictly ludicrous in Gilbertsian about this? The man that our college principal used to bring to the college every year to talk about God’s will for us to be whole had to be led onto the platform because he could only see one out of twenty things. He was a very godly man. Please don’t misunderstand me, but I regard that as literally absurd. If God wants to heal me, why doesn’t he? By the way, that’s very unhealthsome talk. I hope you don’t talk about God like that. You know, God wants to do this but can’t. Do you worship that kind of a God? Or are we going to release the Holy Spirit today? We don’t release God for anything. It’s God who releases us. It’s we who want to do things and can’t do them, not God. That’s unwholesome language to use about our God. Their minister was deceitful. Of course, the young convert didn’t see that. And lastly, their minister was deadly, 19 through to 21. I won’t read this now because of time. Far from liberating their teaching, corrupted and enslaved. And incidentally, how true this is of this whole realm of immorality. Any of you who read the American magazine Leadership, a very fine magazine incidentally, will remember an appalling article written by a minister who had been captured by this pornography and had found no escape from it. Now this language of verses 19 to 21, of course, is a clear allusion to Matthew 12, 45. And I’d like you, if you would, to turn back to that. This is where the phrase comes from. This, no doubt, is where Peter learned it from. Verse 45, then he goes and brings with him seven other spirits more evil than himself, and they enter and dwell there. And, it’s this great phrase, or rather horrifying phrase, the last state of that man becomes worse than the first. Come back then to our passage. Verse 20, 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 overpowered, the last state has become worse than the first. A direct reference. Now, this language seems to me to give us the clue to the meaning of these very difficult verses. If these people had been simply unregenerate, then they would have remained in that first position all the way through. But it is not said that. It is said of these people that they had a position at the first of being unregenerate, and then they had come to a knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, and then they had gone back from that, and when they went back from that, They no longer occupied the first position, but they occupied a position that is worse than the first position. I know that that’s difficult theologically, but that’s what’s being said here, isn’t it? And what is being said here is, I think, the normal New Testament language for apostasy. If I start from the unregenerate position and I move into the Christian position, and then I go back through sin to apostasy, then the language of verse 20, 21 is inevitable. Difficult as it is for us, it’s inevitable language. 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. Notice they turned back from the authority of Christ. And therefore their last state was worse than their first. And it may well be, as some commentators think, that what is being described here is not just the state of the teacher, but the state of those that they recapture. I’m not sure about that. I think it’s largely this chapter on the teachers. And certainly what we have here is the awful picture of apostasy, which I think evangelicals have often been unwilling to accept because of our doctrine of the perseverance of the saints. I don’t believe any less in the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints. I have to hold these two things together and say that there are mysteries in God’s governing of the world and the church which I can’t penetrate. I believe if he starts good work he continues it to the end but I nevertheless notice as I see the church that apostasy is a reality. We have to leave it like that because we can only go by what we see. There are mysteries which we cannot understand and explore because they belong to God. So here’s the identikit and let’s go now to coffee and perhaps discuss it together. It’s a very ugly picture, isn’t it? But there is a great ugliness in having known the truth and turned back from it. That is the most ugly thing there is and the most terrible thing there is. And if this is a terrible chapter, well, we’ve been talking about a terrible thing. let’s pray Lord this is a terrible thing and we would gladly have omitted this chapter from our study but we thank you nevertheless that it remains as a record in Holy Scripture we know something of the wickedness of our own hearts and realize that but for your grace and authority but for your Holy Spirit driving us on to grow in grace and a knowledge of you we might well ourselves have turned back. We pray for any and then to us who are being tempted to turn back today. Have mercy upon them, we pray. And we ask that you will preserve the church from this scandal. And we ask that the immaturity the cause of this scandal may not be a mark of our churches. We pray that you will give us grace so to teach your Holy Word and minister your truth that the people committed to our charge may grow in grace and the knowledge of you. We ask it for Christ’s sake. Amen.
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